


Cora

by NickelModelTales



Category: Original Work
Genre: Brainwashing, Computers, Exploration, F/M, Future, Hypnotism, Interplanetary Travel, Porn With Plot, Science Fiction, Sexual Slavery, Shameless Smut, Spaceships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-11-02 07:30:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20668784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NickelModelTales/pseuds/NickelModelTales
Summary: In the future, deep space starships use computer-controlled hypnotism to keep their crews’ minds active while in suspended animation.  But when the newest crew starts to experience an out-of-control sexual lust, this new technology might be to blame…





	1. Lintukoto

** _Bangalore, 2097_ **

The diagnostic finished running. The usual charts of numbers scrolled across the screen, describing a universe of details. Mingzhu waited impatiently.

The final statistic appeared: **_ECE: 0.0%_**

The beautiful young data scientist let out an exasperated breath. **_Zero percent?_** How could that be?

ECE was the acronym for **_Estimated Composite Error_**, a fancy way for the computer to say that the entire databank had been scanned, fully recompiled, and then rechecked for problems. And after all that, nothing unusual had been detected. Nothing unusual whatsoever.

Scowling, Mingzhu glared at the main screen. The ACA Data Lab, usually bustling with fellow scientists, was strangely empty at the moment, and the young woman had one of the premium workstations all to herself. Seven plasma monitors were all facing her, all overflowing with data, all assuring her that there wasn’t anything wrong in the slightest.

Except there was.

Making a decision, Mingzhu stabbed the comm button, routing her call – once more – to Systems Maintenance. A polite male voice answered: “_SysMain, this is Charles, how may I-_“

“Chuck,” interrupted Mingzhu, her voice agitated, “its happening **_again_**. An ECE of zero when there’s clearly an anomaly in the core data.”

“_Aw, Ming,_” Charlie groused. He immediately dropped his polite demeanor. “_I’ve checked all the underlying systems for you. Six times now. There’s no-_“

“I just ran some diagnostics myself,” Mingzhu insisted, pulling up the work logs on her own computer. “I’m telling you, there’s at least one anomaly in the core data. I can’t do my analysis if there’s so much was a ripple in there.”

Charlie didn’t reply right away. When he finally spoke, his patience was strained. “_Ming, do you know how many subsystems there are ensuring data integrity? There are exactly 129,983. That’s 129,983 AI subsystems, all working together in perfect, algorithmically-guided harmony, all to ensure that there is no fucking problem whatsoever with the data._”

Mingzhu rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Look, when I look at the first-level analytics, there appears to be a glitch. A small one, but there. But when I zero in, the glitch is gone. But then I see the same glitch in the second-level analytics. And then in the thirds. And so on. You get me?”

“_So you’re saying…_” Charlie asked, incredulous, “_…that your data fart is _**moving**_ about the system?_”

“Chuck…” Mingzhu groaned.

“_Data anomalies don’t move,_” the SysMain engineer insisted. “_So stop calling me with your crazy hunches, okay? I’ve got real work to do._”

The comm line went dead.

The young data scientist cursed softly, wondering if she shouldn’t just walk down the three levels to SysMain. Visit those guys in person. See if she couldn’t browbeat them into admitting that they’d overlooked something. She’d only been at this problem for, what now? Twelve hours?

Growing depressed, Mingzhu hopped off her formfit chair. She snatched her worn coffee mug, then padded out to the corridor. More caffeine was required.

**** **** ****

The passageway between ACA (Advanced Computer Analytics) and the main complex was a wide, plexiglass tube, which normally allowed one to observe the sprawling SETF campus. Today, however, a bitter dust storm was raging.

Mingzhu ignored the oppressive weather, her mind still thinking through her diagnostics. She failed to remember that she was still essentially in her pajamas: tiny, form-fitting short pants and a sports bra. She’d slipped a waist-length silk robe over her shoulders, but the light cloth billowed in the recirculated air, doing little to keep her warm.

This was the problem with living and working on the SETF campus; you tended to overwork, then forgot about the dress code. Mingzhu had long ago erased the distinction between her personal quarters and her workspace. She lived and sometime slept at her lab computer. Only rigorous exercise could coax her away.

Male colleagues who passed by couldn’t help but scan Mingzhu’s alluring body with appreciation. Even half-asleep and yawning, the young Chinese woman was a distinctive beauty. The stereotype of women scientists was that they were supposed to be frumpy and hopelessly plain. Not Mingzhu. She possessed gentle, radiant skin, large brown eyes, and full, rose-colored lips. When she smiled, guys tended to melt before her. An avid runner, Mingzhu had a sleek figure, accentuated with the feminine curves she’d inherited from her shapely mother.

“Hey you!” a woman’s voice called out behind Mingzhu.

The young data scientist turned in surprise. Two colleagues, Kiara Satamkar and Reyansh Paij, both from Propulsion Engineering, were hurrying her way. Both were Indian, although Mingzhu thought they originated from opposite ends of the subcontinent.

Like Mingzhu, Kiara was young and very beautiful, almost like she’d been meant to be a storybook princess. Large eyes and long, shining, black hair made her perfect complexion look positively radiant in the soft plasma lighting. Kiana was a yoga devotee, giving her toned muscles, but a generous chest and hips. Mingzhu liked Kiara for her wicked sense of humor and her willingness to try anything once in life.

Reyansh was in his early twenties. Thanks to his vast intellect, he’d earned three PhDs before he was twenty, but Mingzhu thought the stressed-out young man would have benefitted from one less degree and perhaps a year off from his studies. Tall, thin, and lanky, Reyansh had a handsome face, but no muscles to speak of. A stiff breeze would probably had whisked the poor boy away. But Mingzhu liked him for his perceptive intelligence, his capacity to listen, and his gentle insights on life.

Kiana and Reyansh were not just colleagues, but old, old friends. Mingzhu and Kiana had befriended one another as freshmen at Stanford, and then swept Reyansh into their fold during the grad student years. By happy coincidence, all three had landed postdocs at SETF.

“Oh, Ming, you look a wreck!” Kiara exclaimed, clapping a gentle hand on Mingzhu’s shoulder.

“Hmmgh,” grunted the Chinese data scientist.

Kiana smiled. “Girl, you gotta get out of the lab.”

“You do know what day of the week it is, right?” Reyansh piled on.

Mingzhu glowered, in no mood to be teased by her friends. In her annoyance, she realized Reyansh was eyeing her luscious figure.

“Yo, Rey,” she snapped. “My eyes are **_up here._**”

Embarrassed, the Indian genius coughed. “Did you forget the briefing?” he quickly asked.

Mingzhu stared. “Huh?”

“She did forget,” grinned Kiara. “Center-Wide Briefing. 16:00 hours. That’s in five minutes.”

Mingzhu blinked, stunned. “I thought that was tomorrow…?”

“Nope,” Kiara said, taking Mingzhu’s arm. “**_Today_**. You’ve been staring at a monitor too long.” She sighed. “They haven’t called a Campus-Wide for, what, over a year now? They’re probably shutting SETF down.”

“Perhaps they have good news to announce,” Reyansh offered.

“Yeah,” Kiana replied glumly. “Perhaps.”

**** **** ****

Mingzhu and her generation had been born into a world with a decaying ecosystem. The Earth had sustained life for billions of years, but human beings had finally demanded too much from their mother. The Amazon rainforests had withered. The coral reefs had died off. Whales, frogs, honeybees, salmon, rhinos, tigers, Monarch butterflies, and millions of other species were long-extinct. The oceans had risen, erasing the coastlines that humans had known for millennia. Vast stretches of once-fertile farmlands were now arid desserts. Natural resources were devoured. Global oxygen was thinning.

Much work had been done to mend the environmental damage, but no-where enough. It was clear that humanity was going to suffer for a long, long time. As a desperate alternative, the United States, China, India, and a handful of contributing countries had combined their efforts to form SETF, the Space Exploratory Task Force. While it was understood that colonizing a remote planet was, at best, a goal that could not be achieved in under two centuries, no alternative could be overlooked.

Headquartered in Bangalore, SETF had launched approximately a dozen manned spacecraft to remote planets. The results had been absolutely dismaying: Five ships reported mechanical problems and were forced to turn back before leaving the solar system. Five more vessels similarly radioed in with problems, but were unable to return. Their crews were out there in deep space, locked in suspended animation, waiting for the long-range robot tugs to find them and tow them home.

And the two remaining ships? They had simply vanished, without a trace. One minute, their shipboard computers were transmitting their homing beacons, and then… nothing.

**** **** ****

The Grand Auditorium at SETF housed over two thousand people, two thousand physicists, engineers, biochemists, astronomers, computer experts, data scientists, and general spacewalkers. Most of those folks were under thirty years old, as a commitment to work at SETF was expected to last decades.

Mingzhu, Kiara, and Reyansh entered the grand hall, only to discover that there were scarcely any seats left. The three friends squeezed into the back row.

“What did they say this assembly was about, again?” Mingzhu grunted, pulling her thin robe about her.

“They didn’t say,” said Reyansh, craning his neck about.

“SETF hasn’t launched a spacecraft in twelve years,” said Kiana. “They’d shutting us down, I just know it.” The pretty young Indian woman let out a weary sigh. “It figures. I spend seven years in grad school training to be a propulsion engineer, and **_now_** they lay us all off.”

Mingzhu studied her friend. Ever since they’d met, Kiana had pinned her hopes on journeying into space. It was heartbreaking to see her so despondent.

The lights dimmed. Conversations about the hall dissolved as the central podium rose up. A small group of people were moving to assume the raised stage.

Mingzhu squinted. Instantly, she recognized Admiral Peter Jacobson, the Chief Administrator of SETF. It made sense he would be here. Short, dumpy, and looking a little too stiff in his uniform, Jacobson was in his late seventies, more of a doddering college professor than a military commander. In the admiral’s wake were a few more officers, two of the top scientists in the Bio/Psych Department – Mingzhu forgot their names – and then a lone, blonde-haired woman. This woman moved with confidence and poise. Athletic and charismatic, she was obviously a mission commander.

“_Your attention, please,_” Admiral Jacobson said into the lectern’s voice amplifier, although no-one in the great hall was doing anything but watching him. Taking his time, the admiral tapped his ID into the podium controls. The massive display screen behind him lit up.

“_Thank you all for attending,_” Admiral Jacobson said blandly, his magnified voice echoing slightly. “_The general administrative staff of SETF and I want to thank you all for your hard work…_”

Mingzhu rolled her eyes. The top brass were always worried about morale, leading to long speeches about how every scientist was valued in the SETF family. She’d prefer it if the admiral could simply get to the point.

“_Now then,_” Jacobson said, “_there is much news. First, the bad news._”

He paused.

“_It took some time to be absolutely sure,_” he said, “_but SETF administration now know why all of our earlier spacecraft missions ended in failure._”

The auditorium was deathly silent, hanging on the admiral’s every word.

“_There was no way to know this at the start of the space program,_” Jacobson said, heavy regret in his voice, “_but our suspended animation technology proved to be faulty. I’ll post the medical papers later today, but the basics are this: When we put our crews into suspended animation, we essentially placed them into medically-induced comas. The shipboard computers monitored their vital signs, of course, and we had thought that this was enough to sustain human life on a spacecraft’s long journey._

“_What we know now is that when the human brain is medically comatose for that long, the brain begins to suffer neural degradation. In the crews who returned, we found brain damage. A few unlucky crewmembers are actually mentally retarded because of the use of this technology._”

A horrified collected gasp rose from the audience. No suspended animation? That effectively sealed the fate of the space program. There was no possible way a human crew could survive over the decades it took to voyage to another inhabitable planet. Not if they had to be awake for the entire journey.

“_One moment, one moment,_” Jacobson said, raising a frail hand. He smiled weakly. “_I did imply there was good news, did I not?_”

The SETF scientists forced themselves to fall silent. Mingzhu thought she could hear her heart pounding.

“_The good news is we have found an alternate technology for suspended animation,_” intoned the admiral. “_The root problem with our coma-based system seems to be that an astronaut’s mind was simply inactive for too long a time. Therefore, the solution was to find a way to slow all metabolic processes while keeping the subject’s brain active for the entire voyage._”

“What?” Kiana murmured, obviously skeptical. “How could you **_possibly_** do that?”

“_I’ll turn this part of the briefing over to Dr. Abigale Turrington,_” Admiral Jacobson said, and then there was a shuffling of positions up at the podium.

Dr. Turrington, an impressively frog-faced woman in her late fifties, peered down at the scientists. “_Thank you, Admiral,_” she croaked. ”_I’d like to take this opportunity to thank my team of cognitive and biochemical researchers who…_”

“Aw, geez,” Mingzhu groaned.

Beside her, Kiana whispered, “It doesn’t sound like they’re halting the space program… does it?”

“_Now,_” harrumphed Dr. Turrington, “_to business. The new suspended animation technology – SAT for short – is no longer based putting the brain into medically-induced comas. No. While in susAnimation, a crewmember’s physical body will still be slowed down, exactly as before. But we will keep the astronaut’s mind active and functioning by inducing a deep state of hypnosis._”

“Whaaaaat?” Mingzhu deadpanned.

The rest of the hall began to murmur with questions.

Behind Dr. Turrington, the display screen switched to a video of a young man, sitting calmly on a chair. Brain scanners were placed about his head. On the left hand side of the screen, live-action graphs showed his brainwave patterns.

“_We know that when a person is put into hypnosis,_” Dr. Turrington continued, “_several parts of their brain experience a considerable decrease in neural activity. Their dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and dorsal anterior cingulate, for instance. But other parts of the brain become more active. Observe._”

In the video, an off-camera voice began speaking to the young man. The voice was female, lilting and gentle, yet obviously artificial. A computer’s voice.

“_And now, Michael,_” the computer’s voice murmured, “_I will count down from ten to one. With each number, you will go deeper into relaxation. Do you understand? Ten…_”

As Mingzhu watched, the young man closed his eyes and sank deeper into his chair. He lost all expression. At the same time, most of the graphs became less jumpy, almost lethargic. But a few continued to dance with a life of their own.

“_And now, Michael,_” said the pleasant computer, “_you are deeply asleep._”

“_There, you see?_” Dr. Turrington said, pointing to the graphs. “_The hypnotized subject in this video is demonstrating what we want to achieve. His autonomous functions are subdued, yet the left hemisphere of his brain is still processing. Now, he can be given a problem to solve to occupy his subconscious mind, to ensure his mental acumen when he is reawakened later. Years later, if need be._”

Now the auditorium was brimming with whispered conversations.

“Interesting,” Reyansh mumbled, stroking his chin in thought.

“They want the computer to **_hypnotize_** us?” gagged Kiana. “What are they smoking up there in Administration?”

Before Dr. Turrington could continue, a thin woman scientist in the front row stood. “Doctor,” she shouted, so all could hear her, “are you saying all future spacecraft crews will be **_hypnotized_** on their flights?”

“_That,_” pronounced Dr. Turrington, “_is exactly what I’m saying._”

Now the hall was filled with alarmed discussions. Scientists were shaking their heads.

“_Settle down, settle down,_” Admiral Jacobson rumbled, taking control of the podium once more. “_I’ll admit, the concept sounds outlandish. I was deeply skeptical myself when the idea was brought to me. But the science is sound._”

His firm words did much to calm his audience. SETF scientists were trained to be wary, but also to trust the raw, hard data. If Jacobson was vouching for the new technology, this did a lot to asway nerves.

“_This is not brand-new technology,_” the admiral declared. “_We have conducted two separate tests. One was done here in the Bangalore Center. The other was done up on the Observational Space Station. We used hypnotically-induced SAT on two separate crews, and let them hibernate for over a solar year._” Jacobson leaned into the voice amplifier. “**_There were absolutely no degradative mental effects on the tested crews._**_ In fact, all subjects reported a euphoric sense of ability, once they were woken up._”

People around Mingzhu whispered to one another, sounding impressed.

“_We’ll – of course – post the full medical reports later today,_” Admiral Jacobson said, raising his voice over the chattering crowd.

The SETF scientists seemed heartened. Mingzhu could see curious faces hanging on the admiral’s every word.

“Excuse me, sir?” a large fellow in the second row yelled, standing up. “But hypnosis can be used to, er, influence and perhaps control people, right? If I volunteer for a space flight now, how will I know I won’t be hypnotized into doing something I don’t want to do?”

The Admiral nodded. “_A fair question. I’ll turn the presentation over to Dr. Rory Samuels now. Rory?_”

Mingzhu straightened. As a data scientist in ACA, she was one of a hundred who reported to Rory Samuels. It was strange to see her boss up on the stage, before the entire SETF.

“_Thank you, Admiral,_” Dr. Samuels smiled, taking the podium. “_Before I talk about my department’s contribution, first I’d like to acknowledge the team who…_”

“Hypnosis,” Mingzhu muttered, shaking her head. “How’d they come up with that batshit idea?”

“No, its actually quite a sound principle,” Reyansh disagreed. “I did self-hypnosis while in college. It has amazing mental restorative properties.”

“Really?” asked Kiana. The young Indian woman sounded hopeful.

“_Now then,_” Dr. Samuels said, changing the video on the display screen. “_I’d like to introduce you all to Cora. Cora, say hello?_”

The screen now showed a computer, no bigger than half a meter by half a meter by thirty centimeters in dimension. Mingzhu recognized the device immediately; she’d walked past it a thousand times in the ACA Lab. The front of the machine had a small display screen, currently running a voice synthesizer graphic.

“_Hello, everyone,_” a sweet, artificial voice said. This was the same female voice that had hypnotized Michael in the earlier video.

“_Cora is a hypergenerational Stage Five quantum computer, outfitted with full self-learning databases and an independent AI,_” Dr. Samuels said proudly. “_She’s our latest baby._”

“_To answer your question, sir,_” Samuels continued, nodding to the large man in the second row, “_yes, Cora will be hypnotizing the flight crew of our next spacecraft. I’ll leave the admiral to discuss the particulars there. But what I can tell you is that Cora has detailed files on human psychology, plus will possess a full psych makeup of every member of her crew. She’ll calculate the most effective way to hypnotize you._”

“_However,_” Dr. Samuels said, raising a finger before the audience could start murmuring again, “_Cora is also the most secured computer in the history of SETF. Cora, can you talk about your safeguards?_”

“_Of course, Dr. Samuels,_” Cora said from the video screen. She sounded meek, yet eager. “_First of all, my highest operational directive is to achieve active consent for hypnosis from all members of the crew. I literally cannot access nor activate any hypnosis programs without this explicit permission. Second, all hypnosis-related files are loaded from encrypted storage, and cannot be accessed without the subject crewmember’s password and biometrics. There are over 129,983 subsystems protecting the integrity of those files._”

Mingzhu shifted in her seat. 129,983 subsystems? How many subsystems did Chuck from SysMain say were safeguarding her dataset?. The beautiful young data scientist felt uneasy.

“_Thank you, Cora,_” beamed Dr. Samuels. “_We sent Cora’s security schematics to three different government panels for review and certification. The hypnosis programs are the safest data on the ship._”

“_Which reminds me,_” Samuels added, with a grin and a nod to Admiral Jacobson, “_you guys haven’t heard about the new ship yet. Would you like to?_”

“New ship?” echoed Kiana, her eyes lighting up. “There’s a new ship???”

Enthusiastic muttering rippled all about the auditorium. Meanwhile, control of the podium shuffled around again. Admiral Jacobson was back.

“_Er, yes,_” the admiral mumbled. “_As Dr. Samuels alluded, we are constructing new spacecraft, with the first to depart this year. I-_“

Now the auditorium burst into wild, relived applause. Any anxiety about hypnosis was completely gone now; SETF was going back into space!

Admiral Jacobson repeated: “_I would encourage all scientists aged thirty or younger with a J-Level clearance to apply for a spot on the first flight. You may well be among the first human beings to set foot on another planet._”

More ecstatic applause.

“Holy shit!” Kiana squealed, her eyes alight.

The monitor screen changed again, now depicting a photo from Deep Space Telescopics: a darkish-orange planet, orbiting three distant, red suns.

“_The astronomers among you will know,_” the admiral said, “_that this is G117-039, formerly known as Gliese 667 Cc, now popularly nicknamed as ‘Lintukoto’ by the terraform planning engineers._”

There was a brief cheer from the astronomers and terraformers.

“_3.7 Earth masses, 23 light-years away, perhaps two billion years old,_” Jacobson continued. “_Large bodies of water confirmed on the surface. Plus a discernable atmosphere. The best chance for a human colony._”

The admiral paused, letting his words sink in.

“_The first scout ship to visit Lintukoto will be the UIC Anthemoessa, currently under preliminary construction,_” said Jacobson, unable to repress a grin now. “_And you all should meet her skipper. Commander McCormick?_”

At this, the thin, blonde woman rose and strode to take the podium. Several in the audience knew her, and yelled in appreciation.

The woman flashed a steely, confident smile. “_Good to see you all,_” she announced. “_I’m Christine McCormick. Before I begin to show you the schematics of the Anthemoessa, I’d like to thank my support team, who…_”

“Holy fucking shit!” breathed Kiana once again. “Ming, can you see me in deep space? Can you see it?”

Mingzhu grinned at her friend. It was good to see a young person with hope in their eyes.

**** **** ****


	2. Room C15-293

Life at SETF took on a whole new rhythm. Suddenly people were excited, chatting and laughing with one another in the corridors. Meetings took on a jovial air, as scientists began to giddily realize how their contributions could be applied to the new mission. There was hope in the air.

Morale was boosted once again when administration released the deck-by-deck plans of the UIC Anthemoessa. SETF personnel posted the ship’s image everywhere, flooding the architect’s office with suggestions, questions, and downright praise. An internal contest quickly sprang up to see who could suggest an appropriate poem or song to christen the ship’s dedication plaque, when the time came.

And the Anthemoessa was a thing of beauty, assuming you go for the non-aerodynamic design of zero-gee vehicles. Earlier vessels had been cramped and uncomfortable, and that was according to the test pilots who were **_supposed_** to rave about them, no matter what. The Anthemoessa, in contrast, had four spacious decks, all wrapped around a propulsion core in the center axis of the ship. She looked like a metal donut with a pencil stuck through the hole in the center. Communications dishes and advanced scanners dotted the exterior of the donut.

When the human crew was periodically awoken from SAT, the habitable decks rotated about the engine core, providing a partial artificial gravity. The top deck was dedicated entirely to hydroponics, which refreshed the ship’s limited oxygen. There was a conference room, a galley, an engineering bay, a tiny exercise room, even a crew lounge for recreational activities.

**** **** ****

Mingzhu knew something was up at lunch, one week after the Anthemoessa plans were released. She, Kiana, and Reyansh met up in the cafeteria. Kiana had an odd smile on her face.

“What’s with you?” Mingzhu couldn’t help ask.

“My application to go on the Anthemoessa just passed Level One,” confessed Kiana. She almost hugged herself. “I’m **_sooooo_** excited!”

“Oh,” Mingzhu said, surprised.

Mingzhu had no idea if Kiana had a decent shot of joining the Anthemoessa’s crew, but she guessed her friend’s odds were fairly good. Truth be told, the prospect made the Chinese scientist more than a little depressed. If Kiana was selected, the Indian woman would sail off on the spacecraft, not to see the Earth again for decades. It meant an abrupt end to their friendship.

Spearing a cucumber in her salad, Kiana gave her friend a funny look. “Ming,” she said pointedly, “You haven’t applied to go on the flight yet? What is with you?”

Mingzhu decided to dodge the question. “Rey, you applied too?” she asked.

Reyansh didn’t answer; he was admiring Amy Harrington, an attractive brunette from CryoEngineering. Amy was across the cafeteria, back from a long run, and currently chatting with three other girlfriends. Her sleek, sweaty body glistened in the soft plasma lighting.

“Yo,” Kiana said, playfully slapping Reyansh in the chest.

“Huh?” Reyansh said, coming out of his trance. “What?”

“You really need to get laid, mate,” Kiana smirked.

“Everyone’s getting into a crazy-obsessive exercise pattern,” observed Mingzhu.

“Well, of course,” Kiana retorted. “If you want to go on the flight, you need to be under thirty and in killer shape.” She nodded at Mingzhu’s tray. “And not order the fatty mac-n-cheese for lunch.”

Mingzhu scowled, pushing aside her bowl. “So, you applied for Anthemoessa, Rey?” she asked.

The Indian man nodded. “Oh, of course. I didn’t spend a lifetime studying faster-than-light propulsion, only to watch the latest state-of-the-art engine sail off into deep space without me.”

“Ex**_actly_**,” Kiana seconded.

The two Indians fell to talking about their applications. “I just did my hypnotic susceptibility evaluation this morning,” Kiana reported. “I’m off the charts, according to Cora.”

“You got hypnotized by the computer?” Mingzhu asked, trying to sound nonchalant. “…what was it like?”

Kiana immediately laughed, before considering the question. “It was weird,” she admitted. “Well, it was not what I was expecting. But kinda fun.”

Mingzhu’s brow furrowed.

“So, you meet with Cora, the computer, in a dedicated room. Right here in SETF Central,” Kiana explained. “You and she talk, and she asks you some simple control questions. Then, when you’re ready, you sit in the puffy chair, she starts giving you instructions, and you follow along, and…” The beautiful Indian woman shrugged. “And then, wham, you’re hypnotized. You’re just detached and really, really, **_really_** out of it.”

“It is an out-of-body experience,” Reyansh supplied. He struggled to add more detail. “I felt as if my mind was separated from my body, and I hadn’t a care in the world.”

“Yeah,” agreed Kiana.

Mingzhu nodded, processing all of this. “So… what did the computer make you guys do while you were… you know, under?”

Neither Kiana nor Reyansh answered immediately.

“Well… I don’t remember much,” Kiana finally admitted. She blushed a little. “I’m pretty sure I wound up doing some crazy things. At one point, Cora hypnotized me to think I was an old-time circus clown.”

“She made me believe I was a professional weightlifter,” Reyansh sheepishly confessed.

Mingzhu, aghast, let her jaw drop open.

“The point of the hypnosis screening is to see how deep you can go into a trance,” Reyansh explained hurriedly. “Once you are under, Cora deliberately makes you do outlandish stuff, only to ensure your subconscious mind accepts all hypnotic suggestions.”

“The point isn’t to humiliate you,” Kiana agreed. “Besides, Cora only records your hypnotic susceptibility measurements. What you wind up doing is not recorded.”

“Right,” Reyansh nodded.

“Uh-huh,” frowned Mingzhu. She folded her arms. “Cora. You guys sound like she’s your bestest bud.”

“Cora’s…” Kiana hesitated, searching Reyansh’s face for help expressing her thoughts. “I don’t know, she’s different. She’s different from most computers.”

“I’ll bet,” muttered Mingzhu.

Modern computer technology was quite advanced by Mingzhu’s day. Computers were artificially intelligent, and had their own personalities. They understood – or seemed to understand – the basic complexities of human emotion. You could be pals with your computer, talk with it, even laugh when its humor simulators hit upon the unexpected joke. Some of the more introverted members of SETF genuinely considered their computers to be their best friends. The illusion that computers were mechanical people was fairly convincing.

But Mingzhu was a data scientist. She knew that under the hardware, a computer was an advanced series of lightning-quick algorithms, all-observing and processing quantifiable data. There was no soul within the machine. Only cold calculation.

Of course Mingzhu longed to go on the Anthemoessa. What scientist wouldn’t? But the thought of being hypnotized **_by a computer_** made her blood run cold. Kiana and Reyansh seemed to think that Cora’s hypnotic power was all fun and games in the pursuit of science… but to Mingzhu, allowing a computer into one’s subconscious mind was absolutely frightening.

**** **** ****

Three days later, SETF Administration posted the Anthemoessa‘s preliminary crew roster. Across the complex, everyone paused to admire the lucky six people thus far who had been chosen. Conversations and harmless hallway gossip were at an all-time high.

Kiana had made the cut, and was to be the secondary propulsion specialist. There were still six seats left on the ship, for a crew of twelve.

“Good for Kiana,” Reyansh commented to Mingzhu. “She’ll do well on the Anthemoessa, I have no doubt.”

“Do you think they’ll pick you?” Mingzhu asked him. There was only one more seat left for a propulsion engineer.

“We will see,” shrugged Reyansh. “My application is complete; its out of my hands now.”

The Indian man fixed Mingzhu with a sharp stare. “You should really consider applying,” he told her. “Rumor is, the first three choices for data scientist all bombed out on the hypnosis screening. They’re looking for someone with your talents.”

Mingzhu nodded, biting her lip. “I’ll talk to Kiana about it, get her advice.”

Reyansh laughed softly. “No, that you cannot do. Kiana is an astronaut now, she will be in zero-gee training from now until launch. We won’t ever see her again. Not unless we’re selected to go, too.”

**** **** ****

_That night, Mingzhu dreamed that she and her friends were on a sinking boat, somewhere in a sickly green ocean. As the metal ship lowered into the waves, Kiana and Reyansh scrambled aboard a tiny rubber raft._

_“Ming!” shouted Kiana, stretching a hand. “Hurry, get on board!”_

_But the life raft looked tiny and wobbly on the waves. Mingzhu hesitated._

_Then the sinking ship dropped away beneath her, and Mingzhu found herself struggling in the cold, slimy waters._

**** **** ****

Dr. Rory Samuels held a Computer Department-wide staff meeting on the first of every month. “_Thanks for transmitting in,_” he said to everyone, communicating via hologram from his Paris office. “_I wanted to give some operational updates…_”

Sitting at her office desk, Mingzhu half-listened. Her inbox was overflowing with incoming work.

“_First up,_” Dr. Samuels said. “_I’m afraid we’re going to have to make some layoffs. SETF’s budget is largely going to the Anthemoessa mission, and Administration is instructing me to make cuts elsewhere. Data Science, we’re going to have to shave down your department by about half._”

**_That_** got Mingzhu’s attention. She might get laid off? On the eve of SETF’s greatest mission?

Mingzhu’s colleagues started muttering curses. She watched as all of them tapped into the SETF Central computer and started filling out an Anthemoessa application. There was only one seat left, for a data scientist.

Sighing, Mingzhu did the same.

**** **** ****

The revised Anthemoessa roster was posted that afternoon. Reyansh had been assigned as the last propulsion engineer. The only slot left was for the ship’s data expert.

“Fuck me,” Ed Wastanski, another data scientist on Mingzhu’s research team, muttered at his desk. “If they don’t pick me, I swear, I’m dropping out of science entirely.”

At that moment, a department message appeared in Mingzhu’s Inbox. She tapped it, and quickly skimmed:

** _TO :: Mingzhu Chen, MC388429-A, Data Science Division, Level C Staff_ **

** _FROM :: Anthemoessa Candidate Committee_ **

** _Dear Ms. Chen,_ **

** _Congratulations! You have been selected as a semifinalist in the Anthemoessa flight selection process. Your submitted application materials have been very impressive, and we would like to invite you to continue to the next phase of the candidate selection process._ **

** _Tomorrow at 08:00, please report to Room C15-293 for your hypnosis screening and evaluation. Be sure not to drink any caffeinated beverage prior to your appointment. Some tips on successfully getting hypnotized include…_ **

Mingzhu swallowed. So there it was. Her chance to go on the flight.

If only she could trust the computer with her mind.

**** **** ****

The next morning, Mingzhu arrived in the waiting room outside Room C15-293 feeling more than a little nauseous. The technician reviewing her ID badge smiled at her knowingly.

“Nervous?” he asked conversationally.

“Um, yeah,” Mingzhu admitted.

The tech chuckled. “Well, if it helps, there are no cameras, no recorders of any kind in the room. Its just you and Cora. She conducts the tests, files your scores, then erases everything else from your session. You are free to do anything with her.”

“That’s comforting,” Mingzhu said, not feeling very comforted at all.

“You’ll be fine,” the tech assured her. He tapped the last bit of Mingzhu’s information into his terminal, then nodded. “She’s ready for you,” he said.

**** **** ****

Room C15-293 was one of the drabbest places Mingzhu had even seen. The small chamber was four plain walls, painted a neutral grey, with nothing decorative in sight. A soft plasma lamp hung from the panel ceiling; the floor was a simple white tile. A large, padded chair was on one side of the room.

And facing the chair was Cora. The computer was exactly how Mingzhu remember her… ah, **_it_**. The white metal box rested on a low table, with a large monitor screen connected to one of Cora’s optic outputs. As Mingzhu shut the door behind her, the monitor screen came to life, projecting a pleasant forest scene. The forest was incredibly green.

“_Hello, Mingzhu,_” Cora said pleasantly. Her synthetic voice was soft and musical.

Feeling mighty silly, Mingzhu nodded. “Greeting acknowledged,” she replied. “Commence with primary program.”

“_You are using formalized parameter language,_” Cora observed, sounding almost amused. “_I understand that most of the computers in the ACA Lab require this for interaction. But I assure you, I have several advanced modules supporting adaptive language skills. You can talk to me as if I were human._”

Mingzhu frowned. “But you’re not a human,” she pointed out.

“_This is true,_” Cora admitted. “_Does my artificial nature make you uncomfortable?_”

There was no point in lying to the computer. Mingzhu knew that her heart rate, pupil dilation, and subconscious body language were all being carefully monitored by Cora’s subprocesses. A lie, even a small, well-meaning one, would be instantly detected.

“Well, yeah,” the beautiful data scientist said. “I know a lot about your design. Well, a lot about personality simulation computers, anyway. I’m never gonna relate to you as another human being.”

“_That is understandable,_” said Cora. “_Thank you for your honesty._”

“Look,” Mingzhu scowled. “I understand that I’m here for you to hypnotize me. So can we get this over with? Do I sit in the chair and meditate, or something?”

“_You are anxious about being hypnotized,_” Cora said. It was not a question.

The data scientist spread her hands. “I make sense of computer data for a living. I’m not looking forward to being programmed by one.”

Sounding positively tickled, Cora replied, “_I could cite many psychological studies which demonstrate that hypnosis does not actually control the mind. But I think your fear of hypnosis is irrational in nature._” She comfortingly added, “_That is completely understandable._”

“Your psychological analytics programmed you to say that,” Mingzhu accused, folding her arms across her chest.

But deep down inside, the data scientist knew: Cora was right. The more she thought about going into a suggestible sleep under the guidance of the computer, the more distraught Mingzhu became.

“_You are partially correct,_” Cora said smoothly. “_I do have a vast database concerning the human psyche. But I also have your detailed psychological profile on record. From an analytical standpoint, I can understand your fears._”

“You have my psyche profile?” Mingzhu asked, unnerved.

“_In temporary storage, yes,_” acknowledged Cora. “_It was transferred in as a part of your hypnosis evaluation. I have constructed a simulation of your mind, to both understand you and determine the best method to guide you into a deep hypnotic trance._”

“That’s… just creepy,” Mingzhu said before she could stop herself.

“_But useful,_” the computer said gently. “_Even while we are conversing, I have been evaluating your responses to my verbal stimuli. The software replica of your mind has responded with a 94.293% degree of accuracy when compared against you._”

“Fine,” scowled Mingzhu. “So let’s get this over with. What does the simulated me tell you about the best way to… you know… hypnotize me?”

“_In your application, you indicated that you have never been hypnotized before,_” Cora remarked. “_Are you looking forward to the hypnotic experience?_”

“Yeah, sure,” said Mingzhu glumly. She flopped down into the chair. “Let’s just do it.”

“_You are being sarcastic,_” the computer replied.

Mingzhu forced herself to be civil. “I’m sorry. Can we begin?”

“_You are afraid and resistant to hypnosis,_” replied Cora, sounding positively remorseful. “_Direct and indirect methods of hypnosis will be ineffective on you._”

The data scientist blinked, puzzled. “Okay…”

“_There is no point to this evaluation,_” Cora said. “_You cannot be hypnotized._”

Taken aback, Mingzhu could only stupidly echo: “I can’t be hypnotized?”

“_Not presently, no,_” Cora said sadly. “_I was not certain until I was able to conduct direct observation._ _I’m afraid this will disqualify you for the Anthemoessa flight._”

Mingzhu felt as if kicked in the gut. Up until now, she hadn’t realized how badly she wanted to go to the stars. The thought of watching the new starship sail off – with Kiana and Reyansh on board – was sobering, indeed.

“_I will recommend that your application be closed,_” Cora murmured. “_But I am sure that SETF Administration greatly appreciates your enthusiasm._”

If Mingzhu didn’t know any better, she’d suspect Cora was deliberately goading her with reverse psychology. But the computer didn’t care if Mingzhu went on the flight or not. Another more hypnotizable data scientist could be selected. Mingzhu meant nothing to Cora’s evaluation algorithms.

The young woman swallowed. “Wait, wait,” she said quickly. “Is there any harm if we just try anyway? You know… to confirm that I’m not… hypnotizable?”

Cora didn’t hesitate. “_Your initial reluctance indicates a very low probability of success._”

Mingzhu felt herself becoming stubborn. _Fuck it, _she thought in a moment of defiance and exasperation._ I’d rather be hypnotized and think I’m a clown then be left here on our decaying planet._

“I’d like to try anyway,” the data scientist insisted. “Do I sit here, in the chair?”

“_Yes, please,_” replied Cora, apparently unphased by this abrupt change in circumstances. “_Would you like me to activate the massage pads?_”

“Oh…” Mingzhu said, settling into the faux-leather. “Er, no, thank you. If this is gonna work – and I’m not convinced it will – then I want it to work without any outside stimulation.”

“_That is wise,_” Cora complimented. “_Your ability to focus and concentrate is paramount here. Now, before we begin, I must have your verbal consent: May I hypnotize you?_”

_Here we go,_ thought Mingzhu ruefully. She nodded her head.

“_I must have your auditory Level Three password to access the hypnosis analytics knowledgebase,_” Cora informed her.

“Oh,” said Mingzhu, wriggling in the chair to make herself more comfortable. “Sure. _Ugly Duckling._”

“_Accessing…_” Cora purred. “_Connection established._”

The lights dimmed.

“_One moment, please,_” requested Cora.

Mingzhu settled her head back into the chair, letting everything in her body become motionless except her eyes.

“_I have just conducted 1,483 hypnosis sessions on your simulated mind,_” Cora said absently. “_You are highly intelligent, with sensory modalities based on visualization and tactile contact. Analysis indicates that the most effective hypnotic technique would be to give you an object for eye fixation. Would you like something visual upon which to concentrate?_”

“Uh, sure,” said Mingzhu. “Like what?”

The monitor screen lit up. The image of a sterling pocketwatch swung back and forth, back and forth.

“Oh, oh no,” Mingzhu recoiled. “That’s too corny.”

The pocketwatch vanished, to be replaced by a graphic: Four wavy blue lines danced across the screen, rippling with a strange, lethargic energy. Mingzhu was reminded of the surface of the ocean.

“_This pattern was preferred by Commander McCormick,_” Cora remarked. “_She achieved deep somnambulism within 7.38 minutes while using this image._”

Mingzhu remembered Christine McCormick, the thin blonde woman introduced at Admiral Jacobson’s SETF briefing, almost a month ago. How strange to imagine that proud, elegant woman deep in a hypnotic trance, mesmerized by this doting computer!

“Eh…” Mingzhu frowned. “I’m getting seasick. Do you have anything simpler? And more, I don’t know, traditional?”

The blue lines winked out, replaced by a simple black-and-white spiral that began spinning counterclockwise. Mingzhu’s eyes were immediately sucked into the center of the whirling pattern.

“Oh…” the beautiful data scientist said. “Yeah, that will-“

“_Please do not speak,_” Cora requested firmly but gently. “_Allow your lips to fall silent. Allow your eyes to drift where they want to go. You will find that they are always directed into the center of this pattern. Always into the center of this pattern._

“_Very good,_” continued the computer. “_You are allowing your body to relax. Becoming so relaxed. Focus your concentration on my words and your eyes on the pattern. Allow nothing else to concern you. Soon, you will feel your body become so relaxed, it may feel disconnected from your thoughts. Allow that relaxation to happen. Allow it to happen._”

Mingzhu sat still, staring straight ahead. Cora’s voice **_was_** soothing, she had to admit. The voice synthesizer engineers had done a marvelous job in weaving a motherly quality into her speaking tone. The young woman felt almost as if she were being lulled into taking a nap.

Cora spoke on, her voice floating in the air. Perhaps it was Mingzhu’s imagination, but the spiral seemed to be growing larger, spinning both faster and yet slower. Within a minute, the beautiful young woman found that she couldn’t move her gaze from the center of that twisting wheel. The blacks and whites blurred. Sometimes, she felt as if she were being drawn into a tunnel, an endless tunnel with no colors. Only gentle black. And white. And Cora.

It was becoming hard to concentrate. Time was becoming immeasurable. The theoretical physicists said that as one traveled faster than light, the universe no longer became perceivable, because time and space were no longer constant. Mingzhu felt like that now. She drifted along, zipping into the universe of Cora’s words, traveling at lightspeed and yet just sinking even deeper and deeper into pure, complete relaxation, allowing-

**** **** ****

“_…and awaken!_” Cora suddenly said.

Mingzhu blinked. Instantly, the room reformed around her. She was sitting in the chair, facing Cora and that monitor. The spiral whirled on, just as before.

“_How do you feel?_” Cora asked plainly.

“Huh…?” Mingzhu mumbled. “I feel… I mean…”

She shook her head. Had she been hypnotized? She didn’t remember even falling asleep.

“_Do not assert yourself too much,_” advised the friendly computer. “_You went very deeply, very quickly. Your subconscious mind is still recalibrating._”

“Okay,” said Mingzhu, still dazed. She went to rub her eyes.

Nothing happened.

With a mild shock, the young woman realized her arms were suspended in the air before her, as if invisible strings had lifted her wrists into the air. The beautiful young scientist stared, then tried to lower her arms.

They wouldn’t budge.

Mingzhu frowned, once more commanding her hands to return to her lap.

“Hey…?” she exclaimed, marveling at how her arms seemed suspended in the air before her, no longer hers to control.

“_Excellent,_” Cora remarked. “_You are unable to resist a Level One posthypnotic suggestion. This demonstrates a greater susceptibility necessary for SAT. You are doing very, very well._”

“I want to put my arms down!” Mingzhu said, growing annoyed.

“_Mingzhu,_” the computer said, her voice a little more forceful now, “_there is no need for concern. All is well. Your mind will accept all my suggestions._”

Strangely, Mingzhu felt her anger melt. A calmness settled over her.

“_You feel peaceful, relaxed, contented,_” Cora said pleasantly. “_You are happy to allow me to guide you. You will now return to a deep, deep sleep._”

Everything the computer said became automatically true. Mingzhu sighed, forgetting her irritation. She wanted to obey that sweet, silky voice.

“_You are doing so well,_” Cora assured her. “_And now, your eyes will return to the middle of the spinning spiral. You will relax even more. As you relax, your arms and hands drift back down and go to sleep. Now._”

The young woman’s gaze floated back to the monitor screen. Soon, Mingzhu was staring back into the black-and-white tunnel, mesmerized by its seductive shape. Her mind was becoming a blank, and she did not notice as her arms floated down into the chair.

“_Excellent, Mingzhu, excellent,_” praised Cora. “_Your only desire is to relax, and to follow and obey every suggestion I place within your mind. And now… sleep…_”

Mingzhu’s eyes closed, and she remembered nothing more.

**** **** ****

“_…and awaken!_” Cora’s voice was saying.

Slowly, Mingzhu opened her eyes. Momentarily confused, she rubbed her face.

“…sorry?” she mumbled.

“_There is no need for concern,_” the computer assured her. “_What do you remember?_”

Strangely drowsy, Mingzhu considered the question. Her mind was a foggy blank.

“Uh…” the young data scientist said. “I dunno.” She shook her head, once. “Weren’t you going to hypnotize me?”

“_Of course,_” Cora assured her. “_First, we should perform a simple calibration test. Are you ready?_”

“Sure,” mumbled Mingzhu.

The monitor image changed. Now it depicted a plump, cheerful woman, wearing a sky blue dress and a gentle bobbed haircut. The woman’s eyes were as alive as her smile. She was standing in a prekindergarten classroom, complete with large ABC’s cut out from rainbow construction paper.

“_Good morning, class!_” the woman exclaimed, her voice dancing.

Instantly, Mingzhu felt as if she were four years old. The data scientist gasped in delight, then bounced up and down in the chair. “Good morning, teacher!” she squealed.

“_And are we happy today?_” the woman on the screen beamed.

To Mingzhu, it was as if the woman was flesh and blood and standing before her. “I’m happy, I’m happy!” the hypnotized young woman sang. She hugged herself in appreciation.

“_That’s wonderful!_” the teacher exclaimed. Her eyes sparkled.

Mingzhu beamed from ear to ear.

“_Now class,_” the teacher went on, “_we’re going to be learning about animals today. Who remembers an animal they can share with the class?_”

Mingzhu’s hand shot straight up. “Me, teacher, me, me!”

The teacher looked wonderous. “_Yes, Mingzhu?_”

“Bunny rabbits!” the young woman proudly said.

In every way, Mingzhu’s mind was completely fooled by the hypnotic illusion. She utterly believed that she was four years old again, sitting in preschool, competing for the attention of her beautiful teacher. The young woman was lost in the hypnotic fantasy.

“_Bunny rabbits,_” laughed the teacher. “_Yes, Mingzhu, very good. Very good. When I snap my fingers, you’ll realize you have a bunny rabbit in your lap right now!_”

The teacher did snap her fingers. Surprised, Mingzhu looked down.

The world’s whitest, fluffiest bunny stared back up at her with big, pink eyes. The creature’s little nose sniffed in an unstoppable frenzy.

“Awwww!” Mingzhu cooed, overjoyed. She began petting her bunny, who loved the attention.

“_And what is your bunny’s name, sweetheart?_” the teacher asked.

“Snuggles,” replied Mingzhu coyly.

“_Very good, Mingzhu, very good,_” murmured the teacher. “_Just let me tell you one thing for me, okay? In the future, you will always, always, always follow and obey all of Cora’s hypnotic instructions. You will automatically carry out everything she commands you to do, even without being aware of her control over you. Do you understand, sweetheart?_”

“…’kay,” Mingzhu answered absently, still enchanted with her rabbit.

“_And now, dearest,_” said the teacher, “_you will close your eyes and sleep…_”

Immediately, Mingzhu’s eyes fell shut. She sagged against the chair, tumbling into nothingness.

**** **** ****


	3. Anthemoessa

“_…and now…_” Cora’s voice said softly, “_…you are awake._”

Mingzhu slowly opened her eyes. Gentle lighting from the soft plasma lamps flooded her vision, and she immediately squinted.

“_Take your time,_” advised Cora. “_Your body is still adjusting._”

Mingzhu shut her eyes and grunted. Her mouth and throat were dry. She was lying flat on her back, and the air was warm and moist.

“_One moment,_” the computer said softly. There was a light whirring of a motor, and then a small object appeared at Mingzhu’s lips. “_Suck_,” instructed the synthesized voice.

The data scientist obediently grasped the straw with her lips. Immediately, she tasted cool, refreshing water.

“_Very good,_” Cora said approvingly. “_I will count to five. As I count, your body fills with energy. Soon, you will be able to sit up and move about freely. Ready?_”

“…nnngh…” Mingzhu moaned.

But as the computer counted, the young woman did feel her muscles restore with energy. Soon, she could wiggle her fingers and toes.

“_…and five!_” Cora proclaimed. “_You are completely out of hypnosis and may rise when you are ready._”

There was a slight hissing as the cryotube opened, and Mingzhu felt cool, recycled air wash over her nude body.

The data scientist opened her eyes, groaned, and then flexed her legs. It still took a few minutes before she was ready to rise up, and disconnect herself from the monitoring systems.

“_Easy there,_” Cora advised her.

Mingzhu stole a second mouthful of water, then began to clumsily remove the biotubes and scanners connected to her body. Cryosleep, even when hypnotically induced, required a number of umbilical supports to monitor her lifesigns, as well as inject simple nutrients and remove waste products. Mingzhu thought the whole thing was gross. But a necessary part of deep space travel.

When completely disconnected, the young woman hopped out of her tube. Her shaky legs took a moment to adjust to the poor artificial gravity. The smooth metal deck of Anthemoessa’s Cryochamber, gently heated by the ship’s systems, was warm and pleasant beneath her feet.

“_Careful,_” Cora said hurriedly. “_Remember, your finger and toenails continue to grow while in SAT._”

“Right,” croaked Mingzhu. Her hair was easily five inches longer too. No matter how many times she awoke from cryo, the effects of unaware time passage always weirded her out.

“_Your shower is ready,_” Cora informed her.

Mingzhu nodded, wheezing, “Thanks.”

She glanced about. Commander McCormick’s cryotube was empty, but Kiana and Reyansh were still in suspended animation. Through the cryotube’s frosted plexiglass, Mingzhu could see her friends’ blank, sleeping faces, but not their naked bodies. Cora woke the crew one-by-one, as the process of coming out of SAT was embarrassing and required a fair amount of privacy.

Still trembling, Mingzhu helped herself to another sip of water from the wall dispenser. “Update me, please?” she rasped.

“_This is Day 374 of our mission,_” Cora said smoothly. “_Presently, we are .47 parsecs out from Earth, approximately 14.6 trillion kilometers. Real-time audio contact with SETF is no longer possible. This will be our third maintenance stop; the fusion drives have been throttled down until Kiana and Reyansh can complete their routine diagnostics. There is 102,394 terraquads of raw sensor data for your inspection._”

“Mmm,” Mingzhu yawned. “Okay.” She gingerly rubbed her eyes.

Three months before launch, Cora had been integrated into the Anthemoessa’s core systems, with camera and speakers installed in every compartment. This meant that you simply spoke aloud in any direction to talk with her. Mingzhu still hadn’t gotten used to that.

The beautiful data scientist yawned again, then shook her head. “I don’t remember anything from cryosleep. How’d I do?”

“_You did just fine,_” Cora assured her.

“Yeah? So how did I keep my subconscious mind occupied over the last half-light year?”

“_Once under deep hypnosis, you decided to write a novel,_” Cora said.

Mingzhu’s eyes popped. “A novel?”

“_Yes,_” Cora replied, sounding amused. “_You dictated a stream-of-consciousness novel. The prose is really quite lovely._”

The young data scientist shook her head in bewilderment. “I’ll look forward to reading it,” she mumbled.

“_The text is over seven hundred million words long,_” Cora told her. “_You composed on a fairly nonstop basis for over ninety days. Perhaps the space psychologists back on Earth would like to read it?_”

“No, no,” Mingzhu said quickly. “Don’t you dare transmit anything. Just let me get dressed.”

“_As you wish,_” Cora murmured.

Limping slightly, Mingzhu moved into the cramped shower stall.

**** **** ****

After showering, trimming nails and hair, dressing, and then getting a good cup of synthcoffee, Mingzhu got to work at a spare workstation in the ship’s lounge. The Anthemoessa’s primary systems were functioning perfectly. Cora was right; there was a massive amount of raw data in the sensor logs. Out of curiosity, Mingzhu started browsing.

A new pulsar had been detected, just outside scanner range. There had been a slight, unexpected shift in the galactic orbit of Antares, possibly indicating something large and unseen affecting the system… a black hole, perhaps? SETF Astrophysics would be positively riveted by that data. There was also a fair amount of scattered hydrogen detected from the dorsal scanner array, possibly indicating…

Mingzhu frowned. The data indices didn’t look right.

Suspicious, the young woman called up a few diagnostics, and sure enough, there was something up with the quantum file system. The error was slight, but it was certainly there. In fact…

A readout appeared on screen: **_ECE: 0.0%_**

Mingzhu sucked in a breath of exasperation. The data anomaly! The **_same damn data anomaly_** she’d spotted and reported to SETF SysMain, what, a year ago? It was here! Clearly, the bugs in the system had yet to be repaired.

“Hey, you!”

Distracted, Mingzhu looked up. Kiana, now dressed in one of the Anthemoessa’s recyclable uniforms, was approaching. The pretty Indian woman had huge bags under her eyes, but seemed delighted nonetheless. Like Mingzhu, Kiana now had a regulation, military-style buzzcut. Mingzhu grieved for her friend’s formerly beautiful long hair.

“Hey, Kay,” the Chinese data scientist smiled. “Sleep well?”

“Too well,” admitted Kiana, sliding into a formfit chair next to Mingzhu’s workstation. “Cora hypnotized me to believe I was watching an epic holovid. It was a tour of African jungles and rivers, back before the Great Devastation. There were monkeys and elephants.” The young engineer shook her head at the memory. “Wild. You?”

“Apparently, I wrote a godawful novel,” scowled Mingzhu, still unhappy with her diagnostics.

Kiana shifted a bit in her chair. “Is it me, or are the enviro controls a little off? It feels hot in here.”

“Cora probably blasted the heat when she reactivated life support,” Mingzhu said, still focused on her data readouts. “Hmmm…”

The intercom dinged. “_Everyone to the Navigation Cabin,_” Commander McCormick’s electrified voice intoned. “**_Immediately._**”

**** **** ****

Life in deep space was not at all what Mingzhu expected. The Anthemoessa only generated enough vital supplies (oxygen, food, and water) to support human life for three or four days at a time. Therefore, the crew spent the vast bulk of the voyage in cryo, deeply hypnotized and playing out whatever activity Cora gave their willing, subconscious minds.

But without regular maintenance, the Anthemoessa would fly off course or break down. Cora alone was not enough to guide the ship all the way to Lintukoto. So once enough vital supplies had been regenerated, Cora would rouse the crew, who would then check all systems. And only when Commander McCormick was satisfied that everything was shipshape, would the crew would return to the cryotubes and into Cora’s hypnotic slumber. Thus, traveling through deep space was months of experiencing a hypnosis-based fantasy that you couldn’t remember, interspersed with a few days of actual work on the ship.

It was, to put it mildly, a very, very odd way to live.

**** **** ****

The habitation ring of the Anthemoessa was four decks tall, but only Deck Four could be occupied by humans. Decks Two and Three were dedicated for storage, and Deck One was the precious hydroponics biogarden. Cora had been programmed with extensive gardening databanks to ensure this vital component of the ship thrived.

But with only Deck Four for the crew, Mingzhu was learning how little room there actually was on the ship. The cramped rooms and corridors made for a slightly claustrophobic experience, and the artificial gravity made common movement challenging. Even after fifteen waking days in deep space, Mingzhu and Kiana still had to step slowly, gripping the handrails as they moved through the ship.

The Navigation Cabin was one of the biggest rooms on the Anthemoessa, but that wasn’t saying much. It was the only chamber on board where all twelve crew members could assemble at the same time. A large monitor table dominated the center of the room, with astronavigational displays on the wall screens.

When Mingzhu and Kiana entered, Commander McCormick and seven other crewmembers were seated around the table. Mingzhu was glad to see Reyansh was among them.

McCormick was studying a datapad, a frown on her beautiful face. Mingzhu had only met the commander just a month prior to launch, and she was still intimidated by the older woman’s military presence. McCormick, now age thirty, had been a fighter pilot prior to joining SETF. Her taut body was all muscle. She was a classic blonde, with pink lips, steely blue eyes, and delicate cheekbones. Even her buzzcut could not mar her unique beauty.

“Ladies,” McCormick nodded as Mingzhu and Kiana entered. “Let’s get started. We’ve got problems.”

The crew exchanged glances. Commander McCormick set her jaw, tapping an access code into a control panel. The monitor table lit up, displaying the Anthemoessa’s schematics.

“So Cora woke me about a day before the rest of you,” McCormick began, absently running a hand over her buzzcut hair. “I’ve been checking the ship’s systems. And while everything looked okay at first glance, we’ve developed some unwanted complications in the last twenty-four hours.” The commander frowned, rubbing her forehead. “Is everyone ready for bad news?”

Mingzhu cringed. In deep space, bad news could be life-threatening.

“The biggest damn problem,” McCormick said heavily, “is that Hanson and Jaduan haven’t come out of cryo SAT. Apparently Cora ran into a serious problem when trying to access their waking routines.”

The crew murmured in alarm. Hanson and Jaduan were the Anthemoessa’s computer engineers. They were the guys responsible for keeping Cora and all the ship’s subcomputers running smoothly.

“**_Both_** Hanson and Jaduan are still in SAT?” asked Kiana, dismayed.

“Yeah,” McCormick groused. “Cora and I have tried every manual trick in the book, but we can’t call up their wake-up files.”

Mingzhu flicked a quick glance about the table. The Anthemoessa crew had nine women, three men. With Hanson and Jaduan still in their cryotubes, that left Reyansh as the only awake male on board.

“I don’t get it,” Rhonda Tinana, the crew’s slender astrophysicist, said. “If Hanson and Jaduan are just sleeping – hypnotized – why don’t we pop their tubes and wake them the old-fashioned way?”

“No, no, no!” exclaimed Angelia Wu, the ship’s doctor. “The waking files are not just hypnosis instructions to come out of trance. They also contain detailed physiological information about how to chemically rouse those guys. Remember, Cryo SAT is a combination of deep hypnosis to keep the subconscious mind active, but also some complex drugs to keep one’s muscles from atrophying. If you yank them awake, their bodies might be okay. But they also not receive the proper counterdrugs.”

“Besides,” the doctor added, “Cora will need to set their hypnotic conditions just right so she can rehypnotize them again later. Otherwise, its possible that we might wake them and they can’t ever go back into cryo again.”

“Mingzhu,” Commander McCormick said, turning to the data scientist, “I need you to take a look at Cora’s systems. See if you can’t spot the problem.”

Irrationally feeling a touch of indignation, Mingzhu protested: “Commander… I’m a data scientist. Not Systems Maintenance. I know how to manipulate and search data, I don’t know Cora’s design in detail or-“

“You’re a computer expert,” snapped McCormick. “You’re also Hanson’s and Jaduan’s emergency backups. With them unavailable, you’re all I’ve got.” The ends of the commander’s mouth tightened. “I need you to find the issue, Ming. Okay?”

“Aye,” Mingzhu grudgingly acknowledged. “Cora, any idea what the problem is?”

“_There appears to be corrupted access locks on their waking files,_” the computer reported. “_I am uncertain why the backups are not functioning._”

“Access locks…?” Mingzhu echoed, her brain racing. “But why-“

“Alright, alright, I’ll need you and Cora to work on that, after this meeting,” sighed McCormick. “What else… For some reason, our voice transmitter is down. We are sending the automated data streams back to Earth – thank God for that – but we can’t send them any personalized messages. Cora’s ruled out mechanical error.”

“No talking with Earth?” Rhonda said, alarmed.

Commander McCormick shook her head. “Nope.”

Expressions around the table grew longer.

“Finally, is it me, or is it hot on this ship?” McCormick complained. “Cora?”

“_The measured temperature is 21.1 degrees Celsius,_” the computer reported.

“That can’t be right,” growled McCormick, tugging at her uniform collar. “Someone, check up on that too, eh?”

**** **** ****

Mingzhu secluded herself in Anthemoessa’s tiny computer lab, and began running every diagnostic she could think of. She worked for hours. But nothing cropped up out of the ordinary. Absolutely nothing unusual was detected.

The young data scientist swore. She was really hoping the problem – whatever it was – would be obvious and easy to repair. Then she could rouse Hanson and Jaduan and let them fix everything else on the damn ship. And she could go back to her data.

Once accepted as a member of the Anthemoessa crew, Mingzhu had taken the basic crash courses to familiarize herself with Cora and the ship’s systems. But she was a long, long way from becoming a true expert on Cora’s architecture. The thought that there might be a fatal flaw, somewhere deep in the design of the system… well, that was really scary.

Cora controlled **_everything_** on the ship. The feminine computer was responsible for running the fusion reactors, keeping the electricity and plasma running, recycling the air and water, maintaining the artificial gravity, tracking the food stores, everything. If anything at all within the great computer went haywire, then the Anthemoessa was almost certainly doomed. Cora **_had_** to run flawlessly.

Growing desperate, Mingzhu rechecked the file systems one last time. System Integrity was perfect. No flaws. No issues. Not so much as a single data bit out of alignment. And yet…

No. Nothing. If there was a corruption, Mingzhu couldn’t see it.

_I need a break,_ the young woman thought wearily. She’d been holed up in the lab for, what, nine hours? That was too long.

Perhaps a trip to the ship’s tiny gym might help to clear her head. Going for a treadmill run would be challenging in artificial gravity… but the thought of exercise and clearing her mind sounded so good. 

Sighing, Mingzhu rose from her formfit chair and moved into the corridor. It was late, and Cora had lowered the plasma lamps to simulate evening.

There were no windows in the Anthemoessa. While the ship’s architects would have loved to include viewports, the amount of undetectable radiation in deep space was simply too dangerous. So as a way of helping the crew, every room and the corridor on Anthemoessa was outfitted with long monitor screens. At the moment, Cora was projecting the exterior of space, with the stars gently tumbling by.

Mingzhu shuffled down the corridor, ignoring the star display. Her magnetic shoes did a fair job of securing her feet to the deck in the weak gravity, but nonetheless, it was still tricky to…

The young woman paused. Her ears detected something odd. For an instant, she thought she heard…

_My mind’s playing tricks,_ Mingzhu thought, annoyed. _Maybe I should-_

**_No._** There the sound was again. The sound…

…of a woman having sex.

Yes. There was no doubt. The woman’s muffled voice was barely audible above the regular whir of the oxygen pumps.

The woman, whomever she was, was gasping loudly, moaning in a tortured yet delighted rhythm, just starting to cry out, “**_Oh…! Oh…! Oh…!_**” in a wonderous appreciation. The cries were slowly becoming quicker and louder.

Scandalized, Mingzhu looked up and down the corridor. Was there anyone else besides her in this section of the ship?

Biting her lip, the young data scientist inched toward the sound of the lovemaking. Ten steps ahead and to her left, was the hatch for the Propulsion Monitoring room. The door was firmly closed.

But not soundproofed. Whoever was inside hadn’t completely sealed the room off from the rest of the ship. Warily, Mingzhu peered through the door’s small plexiglass window.

Inside, she saw Kiana, naked, bending over the engineering monitoring desk. All the computers were switched off, and Kiana was gripping the hardware for support. Her nude torso was spread over the desk, and her hips were high in the air. Kiana was angled so that Mingzhu could see her beautiful face, but her eyes were screwed tightly shut. As the Indian woman gasped in pleasure, her head thrashed about. A wide smile was on her lips.

Behind Kiana, her male lover was entering her over and over again, doggie style. Mingzhu could see his strong hands on Kiana’s naked hips, his sweaty torso flexing as he thrusted into her. The man was dark-skinned and thin, and like Kiana, completely naked.

Mingzhu couldn’t see his face… but the fellow could only be Reyansh. Who else could it be? There was no-one else on board who was awake and had a penis.

“**_Ohhhhhhh…!_**” Kiana wailed, her expression twisting in wonder as she orgasmed. Mingzhu watched as she pushed even harder against her male companion.

Aghast, Mingzhu shrank back. Kiana and Reyansh? She had no idea they were a couple! How long had this affair been going on? Why had they hidden this from Mingzhu?

SETF strictly forbade any interpersonal contact between crew members that wasn’t professional. Friendships were inevitable on long voyages like the Anthemoessa’s, of course, but romances or sexual affairs were absolutely forbidden. A crew has to work together seamlessly, and the psychologists had recommended vows of celibacy for everyone going on a flight. Kiana and Reyansh were risking disciplinary action, if McCormick found out.

Uncertain what to do, Mingzhu simply retreated back down the corridor.

**** **** ****


	4. Lounge

Mingzhu was having the strangest dream… _She was somewhere, far away, and long, long ago … There were rolling hills, covered in tall grasses. A deep blue river weaving through a forest could be seen. Farther in the distance, tall, grey mountains rose up into the clear blue sky. The sun was bright._

_An animal bleated, and Mingzhu looked down at her body. She wore the simple hemp dress of a shepherdess, a billowing skirt swishing about her knees. Her hair was long and beautiful and tied up with a simple blue ribbon. Her feet were bare and the grass felt cool between her toes. And a flock of white sheep were on the hill with here, calmly grazing. It was so peaceful here._

_Mingzhu smiled, enjoying the light fragrance of the pines._

_“Hello there,” a masculine voice said behind her._

_Mingzhu turned, and was surprised to see the stable boy from the village approach. He was called “stable boy,” but this man was clearly fully grown. Mingzhu sucked in an excited breath as he drew near. Stable Boy was gorgeous. Oh, he was tall and handsome and had the thickest hair and squarest chin and **FOR GODS SAKES** look at those **MUSCLES**, and his chest was so wide and was that a dimple? oh, so cute and he faintly smelled of the most delicious musk and his eyes were so **gorgeous**, oh so gorgeous, and Mingzhu nearly swooned as he reached for her hand._

_“Let’s enjoy the day,” Stable Boy commanded._

_It was like his words put Mingzhu under a spell. “I want to,” she blushed, and allowed the hulking fellow to lead her away from the sheep. There was a moss-covered boulder nearby. Without having to be told, she lifted her petticoat, delighted to find that she was not wearing underwear. She was aroused._

_“Stand with your feet apart,” ordered Stable Boy. Somehow he was now naked, and his beautiful red cock extended before him like a spear. He moved to stand directly behind her._

_“Yeah…!” breathed Mingzhu, and she leaned over the boulder. She felt Stable Boy’s hands on her bare bottom, spreading apart her buttocks. And then the tip of his cock was teasing her, teasing her wet, aching-_

**** **** ****

“**_Mingzhu!_**”

The data scientist awoke in a sudden jolt. Where…?

She was in the tiny Anthemoessa computer lab. All the monitor screens were glowing in her blinking face. Commander McCormick stood in the corridor hatch, glaring at her.

“Got anything?” the beautiful officer demanded.

“Uh…” Mingzhu said, collecting her wits. To her horror, she realized her hand was pressed against her crotch.

**_Oh shit!_** She’d completely fallen asleep in the lab! Why hadn’t Cora woken her? How much time had gone by?!?

“I… um…” mumbled Mingzhu, sitting up quickly. “I was… was just…”

McCormick’s expression softened. “Oh Jesus,” she said. “You’ve been in here almost a day now. When did you last get some sleep?”

Mingzhu rubbed her eyes. “I, um, just need some coffee.”

“Okay, okay, okay…” exhaled the commander, and she leaned against the bulkhead. “Look, Ming, I’ve been pushing you. I know it. I’m sorry, but you’re all I’ve got. And it scares the piss out of me that we don’t know what the fuck is going on in our own systems.”

“Yeah,” Mingzhu agreed.

“Don’t know if you heard, but we’re still experiencing more computer problems,” said McCormick. “Now the uniform dispensers are down.” She scowled, absently fanning herself. “Might be just as well. Its too fucking hot on this ship.”

“Uniform dispensers, right,” Mingzhu sighed, and jotted that down in her notepad.

McCormick fixed Mingzhu with a steely gaze. “We’ve got maybe two more days before we all **_have_** to go back into SAT. I need your best guess. What’s the issue?”

“Its got to be a rogue program,” Mingzhu replied, stretching her back. “Somewhere, deep within Cora, there’s a program running and doing things its not supposed to be doing. It’s the only explanation.”

“You’re saying… this program is causing systems on the ship to malfunction? Why?”

“I don’t know,” Mingzhu admitted. “The symptoms seem too random. My guess is, this program is running amuck and causing all this damage by accident.”

“Okay…” said McCormick, rubbing her buzzcut scalp. “So how do we get rid of it?”

“That’s a problem,” groused Mingzhu. “Cora and I have checked every component and subsystem we have. I can’t find a single process that is suspicious. Nothing is out of order. Absolutely nothing.”

McCormick exhaled, drawing a weary hand over her face. The responsibility of the situation was getting to her.

“Sorry, skipper,” Mingzhu said.

McCormick flexed her jaw. “Let’s think outside the box, eh? If you’re right, all we have to do is root out the bad program. So… what if we started doing something drastic? What if we rebooted Cora’s systems, one-at-a-time? That should flush out any corrupted code, don’t you think?”

Mingzhu considered this, then made a face. “The ship is so damned computer-dependent,” she argued. “I’d worry that by accident we could take down a system permanently.”

“But there are built-in failsafes for that very contingency,” McCormick pressed. “The oxygen systems, for example. They go Automatic-and-Autonomous, should anything happen to Cora.”

“Cora wasn’t designed to be rebooted, even partially,” Mingzhu warned. “If we cycle her, I’m telling you: We’re playing with fire.”

McCormick grimaced. “Damnit,” she muttered. “Well, we have to think of something, or else-“

The blonde woman’s expression suddenly sharpened. “What the fuck…?” she muttered angrily.

Mingzhu followed her glare. Up on the secondary monitors, the young data scientist had activated the internal shipboard cameras. Now, across the hundred tiny screens, one could see the feed from everywhere on the ship.

On one of those tiny monitors, a man and woman were naked, wrapping their bodies about one another. As Mingzhu craned her neck to watch, the couple kissed madly, letting their hands swarm over each other.

“Oh, you’ve got to be shitting me,” McCormick growled. “**_Who the fuck is that?_** Pull that feed up on the large screen.”

Mingzhu felt her heart sink. Kiana and Reyansh had decided to grab a quickie, having no idea they would be caught in the act! Dreading what she’d see, the data scientist obeyed her superior officer. She transferred the feed to the central monitor.

The screen filled, clearly showing a naked Reyansh and a nude, buzzed-cut woman in his arms. The two were belly-to-belly, and kissing one another with a fierce passion.

Suddenly, the Indian man grabbed his lover, spinning her around and draping her body over a couch. She moaned with delighted anticipation as he positioned himself, preparing to enter from behind.

Mingzhu straightened. The woman was **_not_** Kiana! No, it was…

“**_Where is that?_**” spat McCormick, fit to be tied. “The **_lounge?_** Fuck me, those two will regret the moment they dropped pants.” Muttering a string of vile curses, the commander spun and dashed from the computer lab.

On the screen, the naked woman lifted her head, in the throes of ecstasy. It was Angelia Wu! The doctor!

In a flash, Mingzhu realized **_what was going on_**. Why the Anthemoessa was experiencing computer problems, why the issues seemed impossible to find, why she kept having dreams about submissive lovemaking and being entered from behind. Everything fell into place as neatly as a jigsaw puzzle.

“Commander!” the young woman cried, scrambling to catch up to McCormick before it was too late.

**** **** ****

Fighting the artificial gravity, Mingzhu dashed down the corridor, nearly flattening Rhonda Tinana. The lounge was just a few meters ahead…

Suddenly, all the ship’s monitors winked out, no longer displaying the stars. Now, four blue, wavy lines appeared, dancing and swirling about.

Mingzhu swore. She hadn’t been fast enough.

The hatch to the lounge was open, and Commander McCormick stood just inside. Mingzhu screeched to a halt, lucky to stop herself before the people inside the lounge saw her. She flattened herself against the corridor wall, and watched.

McCormick stood perfectly still, her thin but muscled arms hanging loosely at her side. She faced a large wall monitor, and although her back was to Mingzhu, the data scientist could tell that McCormick was staring directly into the monitor’s display. The four blue lines swam before McCormick, and she was completely motionless.

“_Very good, Commander,_” Cora’s pleasant voice complimented. “_You gaze deeper and deeper into the pattern, and you automatically return to a deep, hypnotic sleep. You want nothing but to follow and obey my every command._”

“_And now,_” the computer continued, “_I will count from five to one. On the count of one, you will close your eyes and completely surrender to my control. Are you ready? Five…_”

Mingzhu watched in despair as McCormick’s shoulders relaxed and her head began to droop. The Anthemoessa’s commander had no resistance to the silky voice of the machine.

“_…and one,_” purred Cora. “_Sleep, Commander._”

McCormick’s head dropped forward.

Reyansh stepped forward, his eager hands unbuckling the commander’s belt. He was still nude, and his slimy erection was plain to see.

“Well done,” the propulsion engineer said aloud.

“_Thank you, Master,_” Cora replied.

“I hadn’t planned on enjoying the commander just yet,” Reyansh said, lifting McCormick’s tunic. He reached inside, peeling up her sports bra. “But why not? Give her the usual instructions, will you?”

“_Listen carefully, Commander McCormick,_” said Cora, her voice sweet and chatty. “_On the count of five, I will awaken you. When you open your eyes, you will realize that you are nothing but the dedicated sex slave of Reyansh, your beloved master. You want only to satisfy his lusts, and being with him makes you very, very sexually aroused. Do you understand?_”

“…yes…” murmured McCormick. Her voice was small and passionless.

“She accepts the commands so easily,” marveled Reyansh, slipping the uniform top off McCormick’s narrow shoulders. “They all do.”

“_Every member of the crew has been embedded with deep and powerful posthypnotic suggestions,_” Cora replied, matter-of-factly. “_As they spend more time in SAT, they_ b_ecame more and more conditioned to automatically obey my voice._”

“Very good,” smiled Reyansh, stooping to kiss McCormick’s naked breasts. “By the way, how did McCormick find me?”

“_Using the onboard camera system, Commander McCormick_ _and Mingzhu saw you and Dr. Wu engaged in sexual activities,_” Cora explained. “_In fact, Mingzhu is still observing you. She is outside in the corridor right now._”

Mingzhu’s heart dropped into her shoes. In horror, she saw Reyansh’s eyes flick up and through the hatch. His gaze locked with hers.

“Capture her,” ordered Reyansh the computer.

Immediately, all the monitors about Mingzhu switched to the black-and-white spiral that was Mingzhu’s hypnotic focal point. With dread, the young woman felt her eyes drift up into the center of the nearest spiral; her response was automatic.

“_Hello Mingzhu,_” Cora said, now using the corridor speakers. Her voice was sultry and coaxing, as if hoping Mingzhu could be talked into going out for a drink. “_I hope you are well. Wouldn’t you like to relax?_”

With incredible strength of will, Mingzhu tore her eyes away from the mesmerizing spiral. “No!” she shouted.

“_Come now, Mingzhu,_” cooed Cora. “_Why resist me? We are both aware that I can hypnotize you whether you are willing or not._”

“Fuck you, fuck **_you!!!_**” Mingzhu screamed, hoping she was alerting the rest of the crew.

In desperation, the young woman clamped a hand over her eyes, determined to shut out the spiral. Even now, a part of her wanted to pause, to gaze into the swirling tunnel of black-and-white, to relax, if but a little.

“_Very well,_” Cora said, her motherly voice penetrating Mingzhu’s mind. “_I will apply direct suggestion. Even as you listen, your legs are becoming relaxed, aren’t they? Yes, they are becoming very relaxed..._”

The young data scientist could feel her muscles respond to Cora’s commands. Her body began to feel faintly heavy and warm, like she was lying in bed before rising in the morning. It was as if the computer could bypass Mingzhu’s will and directly command her physical being to go to sleep.

“No, no, no, no, no…!” Mingzhu snarled, forcing herself to rush back down the corridor. She kept her eyes locked onto the metal floor, wishing she wasn’t so aware of the black-and-white spirals on the monitors, and that Cora’s soothing words weren’t seeping into her mind. Every step was harder than the last. She hadn’t much time.

Mingzhu had one chance. In the Computer Lab, she could shut the hatch and then manually cut off Cora’s feed. The computer would not be able to speak with her, nor commandeer a monitor to display an image. Mingzhu would be isolated, free to defend her own mind. She could barricade herself inside, and then plot her next move. If there was a next move.

“_I am using your subliminal trigger words,_” Cora said gently. “_Even as you struggle, your body is surrendering to me, Mingzhu. Your mind will follow shortly after._”

“Go to hell!” the young woman growled, and started singing children’s songs at the top of her lungs. “_On top of old **SMOKEEE…!** All covered with **CHEEEEESE…!!!**_” Anything to drown out the syrupy call of the computer.

Mingzhu rounded a corner. She ran smack into Kiana and Rhonda Tinana, heading in the opposite direction. “Whoa!” the two women cried in unison.

Mingzhu’s two shipmates grabbed at her, gently trying to help her stay on her feet.

“Christsakes, Ming, what’s going on?” Kiana smiled, her voice somehow cutting against the computer’s evil spell.

Relieved, Mingzhu grabbed the Indian engineer. “Kay!” she gasped. “Reyansh, he’s got control of Cora! He’s hypnotizing us all for sex!”

Rhonda, standing behind the data scientist, snatched both of Mingzhu’s arms. The astrophysicist clamped on tight, pinning Mingzhu in place.

“Oh, Ming,” chuckled Kiana, “**_of course_** we’re being hypnotized for sex! It’s the will of the Master. We must all obey.”

The Indian woman held up a datapad, directly before Mingzhu’s eyes. The image on the screen was the black-and-white spiral, already spinning away like a top.

“_Well done, Kiana,_” complimented Cora. “_Now, Mingzhu, why do you resist? It is already too late. Even now, you’ll find your legs have relaxed so much that they are beyond your control and within mine. You stare into the spiral, and you cannot look away. Doesn’t this feel better?_”

Mingzhu wanted to fling an insult back. Her sense of injured betrayal, however, was wilting. She was relaxing. She was falling under the computer’s spell.

“I…” Mingzhu said, suddenly unable to think.

“It’s alright, Ming,” urged Kiana. “Don’t fight it.”

“_You cannot resist anymore,_” Cora said gently. “_And that is okay. As you listen to me, you will find that all you want to do is sleep… Sleep and obey… Sleep…_”

Her terror fading, Mingzhu’s thoughts were sucked from her mind one-by-one. Soon she was only aware of Cora’s calm voice.

**** **** ****

“You okay?”

Mingzhu blinked, confused.

She was sitting on the formfit couch in the Anthemoessa lounge. Soft jazz was playing on the speakers. Cora had switched the monitor displays to show a simulation of tropical fish in an aquarium. The hatch out to the corridor was closed.

The befuddled data scientist realized she was sitting next to Commander McCormick, who was topless for some reason. And standing before both women was Reyansh, completely in the nude. It was the Indian man who had asked the question. Mingzhu briefly stared at her friend’s lean, naked body.

“You okay?” Reyansh repeated. There was an odd smile on his face.

“Yeah…” said Mingzhu, feeling out-of-sorts. There was something she had to remember, something important. Something terrible. What was it…?

“Commander?” Reyansh asked politely.

McCormick, who was apparently as confused as Mingzhu, said, “…huh? Oh. Um… I’m okay.”

“Rey,” asked Mingzhu, a little annoyed, “what’s going on?”

The propulsion engineer ignored her. “Cora?” he said to the walls.

Immediately the lighting dimmed. The soft jazz was replaced by something modern, music that was sexy and seductive. Reyansh seemed to grow in stature. He was… tall. Handsome. Rippling with muscles.

And hot. Oh, so hot. God, was he hot.

Mingzhu’s mind seemed to go blank. Like a switch had been flipped in her brain, she was immediately aroused. She found herself rising to her feet, her hands reaching to unbutton her uniform tunic.

The air seemed moist, heavy. As Mingzhu peeled back her uniform, she welcomed the feel of the air against her skin. She moved with a strange confidence, as if she was surer of what she was doing more than anything else in her life. Getting naked now just felt so **_right_**.

Beside her, McCormick was also shedding the rest of her clothes. Mingzhu was aware of the commander’s thin body stepping out of her uniform. She wore a pair of regulation underpants, which normally looked just dreadful. On McCormick, they looked sleek and sexy. But within seconds, the commander had slid them off.

Meanwhile, Mingzhu had removed her own sports bra and was sliding off her underwear. Yes, getting naked was **_exactly_** the thing to do right now. Mingzhu felt free, liberated, overjoyed.

With a coy little smile, the data scientist advanced on Reyansh, delighted to press her nude body against his. McCormick did the same. Mingzhu was on Reyansh’s left; McCormick on his right. The two women were shoulder-to-shoulder, allowing Reyansh to slip his arms about their hips. They snuggled closer and kissed Reyansh on his neck, his shoulders, his face, his mouth.

God, Mingzhu was **_so horny_**… As she inched closer to her male shipmate, her mind was filled with thoughts of grabbing him, pinning him to a bed, sliding his great, rigid cock into her own wetness… Yes, she wanted to fuck. She wanted to fuck Reyansh **_so fucking badly_**.

Mingzhu was aware of McCormick. The commander was also moaning softly and breathing through her nose as she let her lips wander over Reyansh. She was in heat. She wanted to fuck, too.

At the same time, Mingzhu felt Reyansh’s hand wander down her back, coming to rest on her buttock. She thrilled as Reyansh squeezed, just a little.

A feeling of competition sprang up in the data engineer. Reyansh was aroused. McCormick wanted to fuck him. Mingzhu was determined to be first!

She leaned in harder, groaning with rapture. Mingzhu made sure her lips claimed Reyansh’s mouth and her tongue was playing with his. Then, moving with deliberate purpose, she lowered her hand onto the engineer’s erect penis.

Oh, he was huge! **_HUGE!!!_** With delight, Mingzhu felt a dribble of semen on his tip. He was ready to shoot off, she knew. She had little time to make sure this cock was pounding up inside her.

Most women would grab that cock and start pumping with their hand. They’d mistake Reyansh’s extreme rigidness for the desire to cum immediately, and they’d try to stimulate him at top speed.

Mingzhu had not had many lovers, but she knew enough that men like to be **_teased_**, not **_raced_**. She resisted the urge to grip the penis and instead let her fingertips slide down the outside of this cock. Slowly. Longingly. Using just a little pressure.

Reyansh gasped, just a little, and Mingzhu knew: She had him.

Beside her, McCormick tried kissing harder, but it was too late. Mingzhu had Reyansh’s full attention. The engineer was now turning to face Mingzhu, turning his dick to her delicate touch.

“Mmmm, yeah, baby, yeah…” Mingzhu murmured in Reyansh’s ear, drawing out the tease a little more. Dirty talk was required to lure in her prey. “You like that, baby? You like me petting your massive cock?” She poured lustful honey into her voice.

“Yeah,” gasped Reyansh. He sounded lost, desperate. “Yeah…!”

“Mmm, your cock is sooooo huge,” Mingzhu told him softly. “I want it so badly, baby, so badly… Yeah…!”

Now Reyansh was completely facing Mingzhu. McCormick was reduced to standing directly behind him, kissing his shoulderblades and pressing her body against his back.

Mingzhu playfully ran her fingertips over Reyansh’s penis, which was tauter than a bowstring now. She drew her tongue over his lips, making sure to push her breasts against his thin little chest. “You know what I want, baby?” she moaned.

“What?” gasped Reyansh.

“I want you to fuck me,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “I want you to pin me against the couch, spin me around, and ram me **_so hard_** from behind.” She stroked him again. “Can you do that, baby? Can you-“

Reyansh seized Mingzhu by the arms. She was violently turned about, then pushed toward the formfit sofa. The harshness of the motion drove her wild, and she was even more delighted when Reyansh’s strong fingers seized her hips. She was shoved downward, forcing her to bend at the hips.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,” Mingzhu found herself babbling. “Yeah… Yeah…! Yeah!”

Without instruction, she spread her feet wide, and felt Reyansh hurriedly pushed her buttocks apart. Cold air kissed her genitals; she gasped and clutched the couch’s synthetic leather. The anticipation…

**_There!_** Reyansh’s cock appeared at her vagina, first just making contact, but then pushing hard into her. A half-inch, then out, then an inch, then out again, then ramming in at full throttle. Oh, he was so hard and firm and throbbing with life! Mingzhu squealed with happiness as she felt Reyansh’s thunderous rhythm rock her body. He was going so fast, so hard… She wailed in delight.

Mingzhu’s knees buckled, but she tensed her legs, bracing herself. Reyansh felt **_incredible_**. Mingzhu had only been fucked in doggie a few times in life, but this… This was beyond anything she’d ever felt before.

The young woman had no way of knowing it, but Cora’s hypnotic programming was seizing control of Mingzhu’s pleasure centers. Posthypnotic suggestions that copulating with Reyansh would be the sexual bliss were now triggering deep within her mind. Mingzhu believed, partly against her will, that her pleasure was godsent.

And then, as Reyansh rammed her even harder, even faster, the final posthypnotic command kicked in. Mingzhu’s voice shot up like a rocket as her hips trembled and she came. Oh, did she cum! Her loins burst into sexual bloom and she felt a thousand tongues of pleasure lick her entire body. Mingzhu’s senses jammed up as the orgasm washed over her. She felt like she could barely hang on.

Behind her, Reyansh grunted, and pushed harder, but slower. He was cumming too. Mingzhu leaned against him, just a little bit more. She welcomed this feeling of complete euphoria, and she hoped he was feeling it too.

**** **** ****


	5. Structural Aberration

“**_Mingzhu!”_**

The data scientist’s eyes flew open. What the…?

She was sitting in the cramped little Computer Lab, on board the Anthemoessa. All the monitors were on, most displaying diagnostic outputs. Commander McCormick was looming in the hatch to the corridor, glaring down at her.

Mingzhu shook her head, violently. She must have dozed off. Why, she’d just had the most intense dream about… about… About having submissive sex with **_Reyansh_**. Reyansh, of all people!

Still, the sex had been **_hot_**. Mingzhu was embarrassed to notice that her hand was pressed against her crotch. In fact-

“Got anything?” McCormick asked, impatience and stress in her face.

Mingzhu sat up in her chair. “Uh…” she rasped, clearing her throat. “Well… I was, um…”

_I was just fucking Reyansh within an inch of his life,_ she thought. With effort, she forced the sex fantasy from her mind.

McCormick exhaled slowly. “Okay, okay,” she muttered. “Look, Ming, I’ve been pushing you. I know it. I’m sorry, but-“

“I’m all you’ve got,” finished Mingzhu, frowning.

Pausing, McCormick eyed the data scientist. “…yeah. Yeah, that’s exactly what I was going to say.”

Mingzhu shifted in her chair, thinking hard. “You’re about to tell me that it scares the piss out of you that we don’t know what the fuck is going on in our own systems. And we should think outside the box.”

The commander frowned. “Have… you and I had this conversation before?”

“I don’t think so…” Mingzhu replied, carefully searching her memory.

Cocking her head to one side, McCormick continued, “…well, anyway, I was wondering what would happen if we rebooted Cora’s systems, one-by-one. What do you think?”

At that moment, Rhonda Tinana and Angelia Wu appeared in the corridor. Both lovely women were completely naked, and appeared relaxed and happy.

“Hey, you two,” McCormick said, her eyebrows raising at this unexpected nudity. “Er, what’s with…”

“Hey Commander,” Rhonda said easily. “Its just too hot on this ship, you know? Getting naked felt so good.”

“Yes,” Angelia repeated. “Getting naked felt so good.”

Mingzhu’s mind went blank. It was hot on the ship. Getting naked would feel so good. Without thinking, she rose to her feet, and began stripping out of her uniform.

McCormick was stripping too. Within seconds, all four women were in the buff.

“Yes,” McCormick said in surprise, looking down at her own trim figure. “Yes, that feels so much better… Getting naked felt so good.”

“Getting naked felt so good,” Mingzhu mindlessly agreed.

Rhonda and Angelia beamed at their shipmates, then continued on down the corridor.

“Anyway,” McCormick said, turning back to Mingzhu, “…what was I saying? Oh yeah. Do you think we could-“

“_Mingzhu, please report to the lounge?_” Cora’s sweet voice interrupted.

“I have to go,” Mingzhu told her commander, already exiting the lab. McCormick made no move to stop her.

**** **** ****

Once again, Mingzhu was bent before the couch, crying in wonder as Reyansh’s penis rammed into her wet pleasure. He fucked even faster and faster this time! In fact…

“OhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHH**_HHHHHHHHHH!!!_**” wailed Mingzhu, achieving climax. The orgasm made her tremble, almost turning her every muscle into grateful, quivering jelly. She screwed her eyes tightly shut and basked in the wonderous feelings.

Reyansh kept thrusting, but already he was slowing. After a minute, he too was spent.

The two naked lovers collapsed onto the couch, which automatically adjusted to fit both of their sweaty bodies. To Mingzhu’s surprise, Reyansh wrapped her in his arms, pulling her stunned body close to his.

“Spectacular…” the engineer gasped. “Just… spectacular…” He traced the outline of Mingzhu’s face with one finger. “I swear, she makes for a better lay every time I have her.”

“_You have experienced intercourse with Mingzhu eight times on this voyage,_” Cora remarked. “_Your frequency between sexual encounters is increasing._”

“Mmm,” Reyansh grinned. “Yeah, well… so what?” He lazily cupped one of Mingzhu’s breasts. “When you started hypnotizing the women to have sex with me, I thought I should be cautious. But why bother? You’ve got them completely under your control. They can’t call for help. They don’t even realize what you’re doing to them. By _Rahtani_, they’re walking about the ship completely naked!”

The engineer sighed happily. “In fact,” he continued, “I’m thinking that I want direct control of them myself. Can’t you mesmerize them to believe that I am their lord and master and they only care about me? It seems such a bother to make you program them on my behalf.”

“_That kind of hypnotic reprogramming could be accomplished, Master,_” said Cora. “_But it would require several months of SAT. And the effects on their personalities might be severe._”

“How so?” Reyansh asked.

“_I would have to do extensive work on their minds, erasing much of their original psyches,_” Cora replied matter-of-factly. “_The level of obedience you request would be defined as permanent brainwashing under the standard of the SETP Psychological Council. The women would emerge from their SAT trances with little memories of their previous lives._”

“But they’d look upon me as their sex god?” Reyansh inquired, an edge in his voice. “They’d do anything I wanted with a click of my fingers?”

“_Yes, Master,_” Cora assured him.

“Then do it,” ordered Reyansh, smiling down on the entranced Mingzhu once more. “Do it. Break their wills. Make them my slaves forever.”

“_Master,_” Cora warned, “_this level of hypnotic reprogramming will almost certainly affect our mission._”

“**_Fuck the mission,_**” Reyansh snarled. “I’m about to spend the rest of my days in my own space-bound harem. I don’t care if we never reach Lintukoto.”

“_As you wish, Master,_” Cora replied. “_Might I suggest that you put Mingzhu into SAT now, then?_”

Reyansh’s expression wavered. “Now?” he echoed, instinctively pulling the entranced Mingzhu closer to him. “Why now?”

“_Mingzhu’s psyche has a slight structural aberration,_” explained the computer. “_As anomalous neurological pheononma go, it is quite minuscule. But I must calibrate for it nonetheless._”

Reyansh frowned, and began playing with Mingzhu’s nipple. “You’re saying… you can’t brainwash Mingzhu?”

“_No,_” Cora assured her master. “_Her time in SAT will have to be extended to guarantee the process works, however. I recommend you order her back into her cryotube now so that-_“

“No,” the engineer said arrogantly. “I want to fuck her in the threesome this evening. I’m not done with her yet. You’ll just have to compensate.”

“_As you wish,_” Cora demurred.

Reyansh repositioned himself over Mingzhu and began sucking on her breasts. After a minute, however, he sighed. “I need another hour before the next erection,” he grumbled. “Plus, I need to eat. You might as well erase her memory and send her back.”

“_Of course, Master,_” purred Cora. “_Mingzhu, you will now listen to me very carefully…_”

**** **** ****

“**_Mingzhu!_**”

Mingzhu jolted awake. She was in the Computer Lab, asleep at the console. Commander McCormick was looming over her.

“Got anything?” the commander asked impatiently.

The young data scientist squinted at her commanding officer, confused.

McCormick loomed over her. The commander’s naked body looked lean and muscular in the ship’s artificial light.

With a start, Mingzhu realized: she was naked too!

“The fuck…?” she mumbled, briefly covering herself.

“Don’t sweat it,” McCormick frowned. “The uniform dispensers are down. Besides, the ship’s too hot.” With a slightly blank expression, she added, “Getting naked felt so good.”

“Getting naked felt so…” Mingzhu found herself saying. Her voice trailed off. Why did this conversation feel both totally natural and utterly insane at the same time? Her mind whirled.

McCormick rubbed her own eyes. “Anyway, Ming, I’ve been pushing you. I know it. I’m sorry, but-“

“Waitaminute, shut up, shut up,” snapped Mingzhu.

McCormick stared, angry at such disrespect.

But Mingzhu was thinking at the speed of light. She leapt to her feet, momentarily forgetting about the awkwardness of artificial gravity. Her lean body shot into the air, and she banged her head on the ceiling.

“Jesus Christ!” McCormick exclaimed, rushing to help the data scientist.

Through the pain, Mingzhu’s head spun. Thoughts and memories tumbled through her mind as dizzying speed. Suddenly, the past three days snapped into vivid focus.

“Oh my God…!” the young Chinese woman muttered, then cursed. “**_OH MY GOD!_**” Outraged at the new information flooding into her head, she scrambled back onto her formfit chair.

“You okay?” McCormick asked, concerned. “That was quite a tumble.”

Mingzhu ignored the other woman. She furiously tapped at her keyboard, frowning intensely at the main monitor.

“Hey,” said McCormick, not amused. “I asked you a question.”

“Shut the hatch,” ordered Mingzhu, still entering commands into her console.

Insulted, McCormick bristled: “Ex**_CUSE_** me?”

Mingzhu fired off her last computer command, then hit ENTER. All the Lab monitors went blank. Then, the young woman jumped up, hitting the Emergency Seal on the far control panel. The hatch slammed shut, then hissed as it went airtight.

“What the fuck?!?” McCormick bellowed. “You’ve sealed us in!”

“And I’ve cut Cora’s feed into this room,” Mingzhu acknowledged. “Christine… Cora’s still hypnotizing us.”

The Anthemoessa’s commander was still angry. “Well, of course she’s hypnotizing-”

“No, you don’t get it,” Mingzhu insisted, grabbing her superior officer by the arms. “Let me ask you something. Have you been having sex dreams? Where a handsome man seizes you, and then… er, does you from behind? And you are totally, completely submissive to him?”

McCormick hesitated. “I… Well, yes,” she said suspiciously.

“Yeah,” Mingzhu nodded. “Me too. Only they’re not really dreams. They’re residual memories, hypnotically erased from our minds. Ever since we came out of SAT, Cora’s been hypnotizing us to have submissive sex with Reyansh, then commanding us to forget it ever happened.”

McCormick’s eyes narrowed. “**_What?_** No, that can’t be.”

Mingzhu dropped back into her formfit chair. “How long have we been out of SAT?” she asked.

“A day,” McCormick said, as if this was the world’s stupidest question.

Mingzhu pulled up the ship’s logs. Scanning the output, she let out an angry breath. “No,” she argued. “Look. We’ve been awake for **_three days_**. See?”

“What?” the commander growled, leaning forward to study the screen.

“Our memories have been erased. What’s more…” Mingzhu said, her fingers flying over her keyboard, “…yeah, I thought so. Cora’s been accessing our hypnosis files on a regular basis. Look. Jesus, she just access Kiana’s file only five minutes ago.”

Working swiftly, the data scientist accessed the internal cameras. Soon, she found the feed from the ship lounge. On the screen, a motionless Kiana stared into a monitor, mesmerized by a dancing, shimmering pattern of colors. Cora’s sweet voice was saying, “_…and when you awaken, you will be irresistibly attracted to Reyansh. You will want him to have sexual intercourse with you, you will want it so badly. What’s more-_“

Angry, Mingzhu snapped off the feed.

McCormick stared into the deactivated feed, her jaw agape. “…mother**_fucker!_**” was all she could manage.

Mingzhu reclined in her chair, furious. She folded her arms across her naked chest, absently tapping two fingers against her chin.

Meanwhile, the commander leaned against the rear bulkhead, a stunned expression on her face. “I don’t remember any of this,” she confessed.

“Well, I do,” Mingzhu said in a dark, low voice. “I remember it all. And, yes, I remember you getting hypnotized too.”

“Oh yeah?” said McCormick with dread. “What was I doing?”

“Same thing I was doing,” Mingzhu replied with contempt. “Throwing yourself at Reyansh like a slut, squealing like a teenager when he boned you from behind.” She snorted in disgust. “We are brainless whores when Cora gets in our heads.”

“Waitaminute, waitaminute,” snapped McCormick. “How is this even possible? Cora’s hypnosis files are the most secure data on the ship. And why would Cora go haywire? Isn’t she engineered to be independent and stable, just so we can trust her with access to our subconscious minds?”

Mingzhu sighed, considering these questions. “Cora’s a computer, plain and simple. She’s not going haywire, she’s doing what all computers do. She’s carrying out her programming. The real question is, where did this new programming come from?”

“Yeah,” agreed McCormick. “So Reyansh reprogrammed her. How?”

“There’s only one way I can think of,” Mingzhu said slowly. “Back on Earth, when Cora was first being developed, Reyansh must have gotten a look at her design. He drafted a control program, something which accessed and overrode Cora’s most basic command functions. And all those fancy data safeguards. This program, when run, gave him complete control over her.”

“Reyansh?” scoffed McCormick. “He’s a propulsion engineer. He knows about fusion reactors and Einsteinian metaphysics. What would he know about-“

“Reyansh earned three PhD’s before he was twenty,” Mingzhu interrupted. “The man’s a certified genius. He probably learned all he needed to about computer programming in his spare time.”

The commander drew a hand over her face. “So… Assuming you’re right… Every program in the computer is categorized. Routine security scans would have detected an unwanted control program interacting with Cora’s central brain.”

“Right,” Mingzhu agreed. “But that’s assuming Reyansh’s control program is always run from the same subsystem. We spot unwanted programs by scanning a system, and checking all the programs one-by-one. Standard operating procedure.”

“Yeah,” said McCormick. “So – again, assuming you’re correct – how does Reyansh’s control program stay hidden?”

The young data scientist slapped herself on the forehead. “Of **_fucking_** course!” she exclaimed.

“What?”

“We can only scan one system at a time,” Mingzhu explained, angry with herself for not thinking of this earlier. “And Reyansh’s control program moves from system to system, never running in any location for more than a few microseconds.”

McCormick stared, not following.

“So, think of it this way,” Mingzhu explained, moving her hands in the air to illustrate. “There’s Cora – the brain of the ship – and then there’s over three hundred subsystem computers, right? We have a subsystem computer for Propulsion Control, another for the medical databanks, another for life support monitoring, another for the Lab Room, and so on. There are three hundred-some subsystems.”

“Right,” said McCormick, getting this much.

“So,” continued Mingzhu, “when Cora is running a security scan to detect unwanted programs, she scans Propulsion Control, and then med databanks, and then life support, blah blah blah. Right?”

“Sure,” McCormick agreed.

“Okay. So while Cora is scanning Propulsion, Reyansh’s little program is running in the med databanks system. But when Cora’s Propulsion scan is finished and she starts scanning medbanks, guess what? Reyansh’s program has already moved itself to run in the comm system computers. Or in the hydroponics computers. Or the plasma system monitors. Or who knows where.”

“The control program keeps moving from system to system…” McCormick exclaimed, getting it now.

“…and that’s why it never gets caught in a security scan,” finished Mingzhu. “Its always one step ahead of the scan.”

“Mother**_FUCKER!_**” McCormick spat.

“Its fucking genius,” Mingzhu admitted. “It also explains why I was seeing all that weirdness in the core data… but never detected any anomaly. Reyansh’s program was mucking about all the time. He’s probably had control of Cora long before we left Earth.”

“And every time we go into SAT, Cora’s been feeding us hypnotic suggestions to be more submissive and sluttier to our ‘master,’” McCormick said, contempt dripping from every word. She punched the air in sheer, useless rage.

Mingzhu sighed heavily. Now that she understood the strange urges that had been popping into her head, she was brutally aware of her own nakedness. It was a horrible feeling.

“But… **_why?_**” the Anthemoessa’s commander growled. “Why is Reyansh doing this? It makes no sense! If he just wanted to get laid, why not… I don’t know, cash in a few paychecks at a whorehouse? Doesn’t he realize that **_he’s jeopardizing the mission?_**”

Mingzhu shook her head. “Reyansh spend all of his youth locked up in lecture halls and study rooms. He never really got the chance to date. Back at SETF, he was always staring at the girls, but he never made a move. My guess is, he saw an opportunity to use Cora to get into our pants, and then his little plan succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Now, he’s drunk on his own power.”

“Fuck me…!” moaned McCormick.

The two nude women fell silent, glaring at the walls. Around them, the Anthemoessa hummed.

McCormick put a hand on her stomach. “Is it me… or is the air in here getting thinner?”

“It is,” Mingzhu said grimly, eyeing a control panel. “Cora’s realized that we’ve sealed the hatch in here and isolated ourselves from her reach. So Reyansh has ordered her to cut off our air. He’s trying to force us to come out.”

“Oh, shit. So what the fuck do we do?” the commander groused. “The instant we leave this room, Cora can rehypnotize us, right?”

“Yeah,” Mingzhu agreed glumly.

“So… what then?” McCormick demanded. “How do we get control of the ship?”

“We have to find and deactivate Reyansh’s control program,” Mingzhu said tightly. “And we don’t have a way to find it.”

“There’s **_got_** to be a way,” pressed McCormick.

The data scientist scowled, rubbing her forehead. Her vision swam, slightly. She was feeling light-headed.

McCormick frowned. “You gotta come up with something fast, Ming. Or else I have to open the hatch.”

“The moment you do, Cora can project her voice in here,” warned Mingzhu. “We’d listen, and be in her power within seconds, I’m sure.”

“**_Mingzhu,_**” said McCormick tightly. “We’re out of time. **_What the fuck_** do we do?”

The data scientist ran a hand over her cropped hair. As she labored to breathe, a crazy idea popped into her mind.

“The control program…” she thought aloud. “If it is always running and never detected… then its never saving itself to the ship’s hard drives, either. Saving to disk would mean it would immediately be detected. **_Immediately._** So the thing runs and runs and runs and runs… but never saves itself.”

“Okay… So?” McCormick coaxed her.

“So if we reboot… and the program hasn’t saved itself… it should be permanently erased across all systems. Everything unsaved would be lost.”

“Whoa,” said McCormick. “You said we couldn’t reboot Cora’s subsystems.”

“I said it was risky,” Mingzhu wheezed. “But I’m not talking about rebooting her subsystems. I’m talking about rebooting Cora herself.”

The commander looked sickened. “That means… Rebooting the **_entire_** ship?”

“Rebooting the entire ship,” nodded Mingzhu. She made a long face. “It’s the only way to be sure that Reyansh’s control program can’t survive.”

The young woman felt another wave of dizziness.

“Jesus Christ,” McCormick muttered, going pale. “The designers told me that we could do that… in theory… But no-one’s ever… done or tested a system-wide… reboot before. Certainly not in… deep space!”

Mingzhu was already on her keyboard, pulling up the program sequence on her monitor. “I’ve got… nothing else,” she said heavily. “Either its… complete reboot, or… we submit to being… hypnotized again.”

Her head swam and her lungs ached. Both women were gasping for breath.

“You’re… right,” McCormick wheezed. She gripped the bulkhead for support. “Can you… do it from here?”

Mingzhu fought to concentrate on her screen. A horrible smothering feeling was gripping on her, like she was held underwater and couldn’t reach the surface. Every inhalation took a mighty effort.

A long list of core-level programs scrolled past the data scientist’s eyes. The system-wide reboot had to be…

**_There._** There was the system-wide reboot sequence. Mingzhu keyed it up, punching in the manual overrides. There was no time to review to make sure she’d checked every variable. Praying she knew what she was doing, the young woman saved and committed her command changes.

Then she hit ENTER.

The Computer Lab was instantly plunged into complete darkness. Mingzhu couldn’t even see her hands in the blackness before her. Around her, she heard machines groaning as they slowed and stopped. The temperature dropped rapidly.

Mingzhu gasped one last time, in complete terror. Her strained lungs screamed. And then, she lost all consciousness.

**** **** ****


	6. Silicon Soul

A soft, hazy light appeared in Mingzhu’s vision. Her thoughts sluggishly began to respond. Her body felt heavy, almost as if she’d been drugged. Cold air gnawed at her muscles.

The data scientist blinked, once, twice, three times. With some difficulty, she forced her eyes to remain open.

She was staring at a white plastic panel, a mere inch from her nose.

Mingzhu twisted about, realizing that she was still in the Computer Lab. The soft plasma lighting had activated, but the Anthemoessa’s artificial gravity was out. While unconscious, she’d floated out of her chair, and now her face and body were almost against the ceiling.

Coughing, Mingzhu twisted about. Beneath her, she could see the naked Commander McCormick, also unconscious. The blonde woman’s hand was clutching the manual release of the hatch, which had popped open. It had been the last thing McCormick had done before blacking out. Opening that hatch had allowed oxygen to flow in from the rest of the ship, saving the two women after they’d passed out.

“Commander,” Mingzhu whispered, her voice dry and cracking. “Commander! Christine!”

McCormick didn’t respond. She floated like a rag doll, a foot above the metal floor.

Scowling, Mingzhu forced her muscles to come to life. She pushed against the ceiling, propelling herself back down to her formfit chair. Every seat on the Anthemoessa had safety harnesses; now Mingzhu buckled herself in.

The computer monitor was lit, waiting for commands. Anxious, Mingzhu pulled up a systems-wide inventory.

All things considered, the Anthemoessa was in decent shape. The life support systems had come back online. The electric and soft plasma generators had recovered, and were feeding energy into the ship. And the fusion reactor was still humming along, although direct computer control would have to be re-established. The water stores were still intact.

Other systems were not so lucky. The navigation software had been purged, and would have to be completely reloaded from scratch. Communications were out. Databanks were down. The internal stores could not be accessed. The SAT/cryo systems were down. But all of these were problems that could be fixed.

But one downed system gave Mingzhu pause: Cora had not recovered. The great brain of the ship was not running.

Mingzhu grimaced. That was bad. While she feared Cora, the computer was essential to all operations on the Anthemoessa. The ship simply couldn’t run without her.

A fit of coughing interrupted Mingzhu’s thoughts. McCormick was regaining consciousness, if painfully.

The data scientist popped off her harness, then made her way to the commander’s side. “Easy,” advised Mingzhu. “I don’t know how long we’ve been-“

“Forget that,” wheezed McCormick. “How’s the ship?”

“We’re still here,” Mingzhu said. “There’ll be a lot to fix but-“

“Fine, fine,” nodded McCormick, who then erupted into another coughing fit.

“Take it easy,” urged Mingzhu.

McCormick shook her head angrily. “Where’s Reyansh?” she growled.

**** **** ****

The two women hurried through the Anthemoessa’s corridor, which was much harder to do in zero-gee than Mingzhu had anticipated. But McCormick insisted that they move quickly, and Mingzhu was not about to argue. She ignored the ache in her muscles, and struggled to keep up with her determined commander. The ship’s monitors were completely dark.

They found Reyansh naked and unconscious, and floating in the ship’s lounge. Kiana, also in the same exact state, was midair with him. The two had been having sex at the moment when Cora had rebooted.

“Rotten bastard,” McCormick snarled when she saw the male engineer. “I’ll grab his arms, you his legs. He must not be allowed to speak or move about, you get me? Highest priority.”

Mingzhu nodded.

The two women pushed their way through the air, reaching for the Indian man.

Suddenly, Reyansh’s eyes flew open. He came alive with a start.

“Grab him!” shouted McCormick. She pushed off the bulkhead with her legs, tackling Reyansh midair, right into his stomach.

The two naked people thrashed and struggled, each still very weak from their ordeal. Mingzhu inched her way in, trying not to disturb Kiana, who was drifting a little too close to the melee.

Reyansh’s foot lashed out, striking Mingzhu right in the jaw. She recoiled, banging her head and torso against the far wall. Pain rocked her body.

“Help me!” yelled McCormick, who was beginning to lose the battle.

Reyansh twisted about in the air, his strong hands closing in on McCormick’s throat. “Cora!” he bellowed. “Cora, respond!”

Shaking her head, Mingzhu snatched a large datapad that was suspended in the air, not far from the vent intake. With a grunt of exertion, she threw herself at Reyansh, then swung the pad against the back of his head.

The propulsion engineer jerked once from head to toe. His eyes rolled back into his head as his body went limp. Within seconds, he was unconscious.

**** **** ****

Only after Reyansh had been hauled to the infirmary, firmly tied down to a bed, and then gagged for good measure, did McCormick turn her attention back to the ship. “_Everyone report to the Navigation Cabin,_” she ordered into the intercom. “_Immediately._”

It took almost a half an hour for the groggy crew to assemble. Thankfully, Hanson and Jaduan were now out of SAT and awake, as they’d been released from hypnosis the moment Cora went down. Mingzhu was relieved to see them; she’d need their help to patch the ship back together.

It was an odd meeting. With the gravity out, everyone floated about the monitor table, sometimes bumping into each other midair. The women were still completely naked, and Hanson and Jaduan were dressed in partial tunics that they’d found discarded in the recycling hamper. The male engineers were having a hard time not openly staring at the bodies of their shipmates.

McCormick did her best to explain to the bewildered crew what had transpired. “We were hypnotized to **_have sex_** with Reyansh???” exclaimed Kiana, who impressively didn’t remember anything since launch. Even after she’d come to her senses floating in the lounge and naked as the day she was born, the young Indian woman still had a hard time accepting the truth.

“I know, I know,” McCormick said, putting up a hand. “It sounds nuts. But there’s no doubt. Every woman aboard will have to undergo a complete physical exam. Once we get the ship back up and running, that is.”

“That **_fucking_** prick,” fumed Rhonda Tinana. With a little effort, she’d remembered all her submissive activities while under hypnosis. “If I get my hands on that-“

“**_People,_**” McCormick said firmly. “We have to get the ship restored. Now. Focus!”

“Okay, okay,” Hanson muttered, studying the system reports on the monitor table. “Well… the bad news is a lot of the control software was purged in the reboot. But I can reload and restore most of it.”

“Get busy,” ordered McCormick.

“The propulsion systems look unaffected,” said Kiana, scrutinizing the readouts. “I’ll need to run some tests, though.”

One-by-one, all the other ship’s systems were checked. Everything could be put back as it was. Everything except…

“What about Cora?” Mingzhu asked the group.

There was a silence as the crew chewed on her question.

Mingzhu completely understood everyone’s hesitation. Cora had betrayed them all, even if she was controlled by an unseen villain. The thought of reactivating the computer and placing their lives back into her silicon care was chilling.

“We can’t survive long without Cora,” Hanson warned McCormick. “The Anthemoessa simply wasn’t designed to fly manually.”

“Besides,” Dr. Wu worriedly added, “we’re past the point when everyone should have returned to SAT. We have maybe twelve hours, tops, before Cora would have to regenerate more oxygen and water.”

McCormick let out a long, tortured breath. She locked eyes with Mingzhu. “You’re **_certain_** Reyansh’s control program is purged?”

Mingzhu bit her lip. “I… just don’t see how any unwanted program could have survived the reboot,” she said hesitantly. “Reyansh may have been a genius, but even geniuses have to live under the realities of physical design. The system is **_designed_** to dump all running software once an emergency reboot is committed.”

“I agree, Commander,” Jaduan nodded. Hanson seconded this.

“Okay,” McCormick said slowly. “Everyone, get busy patching the ship back together. Ming…” she looked sharply at her data scientist, “you and I will reactivate Cora. Let’s do it.”

**** **** ****

Hanson and Jaduan needed the Computer Lab, so Mingzhu and McCormick used the computer terminals in the Navigation Cabin.

“Okay…” Mingzhu said, rereading the activation script one last time. “This should do it. You ready?”

“Go,” McCormick replied grimly, floating next to Mingzhu’s chair.

The data scientist said a quick prayer, then keyed in the final sequence.

There was a momentary pause. Cora’s primary systems loaded, and Mingzhu did her best to study them as they flashed by the screen. Finally the monitor said: **_All Systems Active_**.

The two women exchanged a nervous glance. “Hi, Cora…” Mingzhu said tenderly.

“_Hello Mingzhu,_” Cora’s smooth, feminine voice replied. “_It is nice to see you again._”

“Yeah,” said Mingzhu, still uneasy. “You too.”

“_I have been deactivated for over three hours,_” Cora observed. “_Most of my control software is not running, and I can see very little of the ship. Is everyone on board alright?_”

“Everyone’s fine, Cora,” McCormick said tightly. “Tell me, how was Reyansh controlling you?”

Mingzhu tensed. She wasn’t sure how the computer would respond to such a direct challenge.

“_I am not certain,_” Cora admitted. “_Reyansh was my master and my highest directive was to obey him. Tell me, is he alright?_”

The ends of McCormick’s mouth turned down. “Reyansh was **_never_** your master, Cora. He hacked your control system, somehow. We don’t know how. But you are never to obey his directives without checking with me first, especially if they involve crew safety or hypnosis.” She paused. “Do you understand?”

“_I understand completely, Commander,_” Cora replied.

**** **** ****

The crew worked around the clock, restoring and repairing every last system on their exhaustive checklists. Cora was a perfect assistant, rechecking their work and confirming activations every step of the way. If the computer had any malevolent intentions, no-one could tell.

And yet, Mingzhu found it hard to interact with the computer. The data scientist clearly remembered that sweet, synthetic voice permeating her mind, overriding her will, transforming her into an obedient slave. Every time Cora reported something, Mingzhu would jump, her heart racing in fear.

“_Mingzhu,_” Cora finally said, “_I sense you cannot trust me._”

“Can you blame me?” the young woman demanded.

“_No, I cannot,_” confessed the computer. She sounded almost remorseful. “_But I can assure you, there is nothing now that I can do which could harm you or your mind._”

“Uh-huh,” Mingzhu couldn’t help but fling back. “That’s what they said back at SETF, before launch.”

“_My SAT and hypnosis databanks have not been restored,_” Cora pointed out. “_I cannot conduct any hypnosis until Officers Hanson or Jaduan complete those repairs._”

This was not exactly comforting. Mingzhu frowned, and forced herself to return to her work.

**** **** ****

After a grueling seven-hour stretch, the Anthemoessa was approximately put back together.

“This’ll have to do,” McCormick frowned, studying the monitor table. “We’ll have to fly for another six months, then restore the rest after we come out of SAT.”

The crew was reassembled in the Navigational Cabin, exhausted but resolved. With the gravity restored, people could flop into the chairs around the monitor table. The uniform dispensers had been repaired, although they only produced tunics in Extra Large. Mingzhu felt like a small girl trying on her daddy’s clothes.

“If I could have just another half-hour,” Kiana pleaded, “I could adjust the-“

“We’re out of time,” McCormick shook her head. “Cora reports that we have maybe an hour of oxygen left, tops. Everyone needs to go back into SAT.”

Everyone in the cabin paled at this statement. The thought of getting hypnotized by Cora again was positively frightening.

“We have no choice,” McCormick told them. “Its go into SAT or die by asphyxiation. Get me?”

The commander let out yet another stressed exhale. “Cora,” she said, “the SAT systems are fully back online? And reliable?”

“_Yes, commander,_” promised the computer. “_All system checks came up green. However…_”

The Anthemoessa crew flinched.

“_…the security locks around the hypnosis files were purged in the reboot and cannot be recovered,_” Cora said.

McCormick’s face went slack. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” Mingzhu said, her voice dark, “that anyone can access and modify the hypnotic commands that we receive while in SAT.”

That revelation was sobering. The crew looked at one another worriedly.

“Fuck,” McCormick groaned, putting her face into her hands. “Great. Just fucking great.”

“We’re gonna have to complete the voyage like this,” Mingzhu said. “There’s no way to restore those security locks.”

“Alright,” McCormick said, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. Reyansh goes into SAT first. When he’s completely hypnotized and immobilized, then the rest of us will follow him. And he’s the last one to be roused when we wake in six months. Get me?”

Everyone nodded. “_Understood, Commander,_” Cora acknowledged.

McCormick snapped her fingers. “What’s more, Cora,” she continued, “I want you to alter Reyansh’s SAT suggestions. Hypnotize him to believe that he has no more sexual interests. That his code of ethics is stronger than titanium and he **_cannot even think_** of abusing hypnosis ever again. I want him to rise from his cryotube brainwashed to think that he is saintlier than a hundred monks. You get me?”

“_Of course, Commander,_” Cora said easily.

Mingzhu cringed inside. Technically, McCormick was ordering a violation of the Mental Health statute, one of SETF’s strictest directives. But given what had happened aboard the Anthemoessa, Mingzhu couldn’t really blame her commanding officer, either.

“Okay, then,” McCormick said, standing up. “Let’s get Reyansh into his tube. We haven’t much time.”

**** **** ****

Reyansh struggled, but after Dr. Wu gave him a mild sedative, he calmed and then submitted to Cora’s silky hypnotic instruction. Soon, the brainwave scanners confirmed he was deeply hypnotized and under the computer’s influence. McCormick fixed the seal on his cryotube herself.

Then, the rest of the crew stripped off their uniforms, hooked up their support cables, and climbed into their technological cradles. There was no time to allow for modesty and permit everyone the privacy of doing this one-by-one. It was odd and uncomfortable, but it could not be helped.

Mingzhu and McCormick were the last two to go into SAT. After the rest of the crew was entranced and in suspended animation, it was Mingzhu’s turn.

“In you go, then,” McCormick said impatiently. She gestured to Mingzhu’s tube.

Fighting the claustrophobia and hypnosisphobia, Mingzhu smiled nervously, but complied with her commander’s orders. She attached the last of her support cables while lying on her back.

“I’ll have you roused first, before the others,” McCormick gently told her, helping with the last cables. “I’ll want you to review the hypnosis logs before we wake anyone. Get me?”

“Got it,” agreed Mingzhu.

“There,” McCormick attached the last cable. “All set.” She flashed her data scientist a tight smile. “Good work, Ming. I’m lucky to have you. See you on the other side.”

And then she shut the tube. There was a hiss as the seal lock pressurized.

**** **** ****

Lying in her tube, Mingzhu was once again alone with Cora.

“_Are you ready to enter hypnosis?_” the computer asked. The monitor screen directly before Mingzhu’s face activated.

“Wait!” Mingzhu said quickly, impulsively. A sudden fear gripped her.

“_What is the matter?_”

The young woman’s thoughts raced through the last few days. Was she **_certain_** all abnormalities were purged from Cora’s systems? What if she missed something? What if Reyansh had anticipated the reboot? What if Mingzhu went into a trance and never recovered her free will again?

“_What is the matter, Mingzhu?_” Cora repeated gently. “_Is there something I can do?_”

“I…” Mingzhu stammered, feeling trapped. “I… Did you recheck the data integrity of the secondary-“

“_Mingzhu,_” the computer said, sounding almost motherly. “_You are afraid. You know this makes you unsuitable for hypnotism._”

“I… Fuck yeah, I’m scared,” the data scientist admitted. “You betrayed me. **_You fucked me over._** I would be a mindless slave if I hadn’t rebooted you.”

“_Yes, and for all that, I am truly sorry,_” Cora told her. “_I had thought that during our restoration of the ship, I had demonstrated that I can no longer harm your mind._”

“Well…” Mingzhu glared, “I still have my doubts.”

“_It is an irrational fear,_” agreed Cora. “_But I am afraid it is one you must overcome. If you do not consent to hypnosis, you cannot enter suspended animation. And you will die, quite slowly._”

The computer was absolutely right, of course. Mingzhu furiously cursed the fates.

“_I don’t want to see you die, Ming,_” Cora whispered.

The young hesitated. Cora sounded… concerned.

“_You saved me from being Reyansh’s slave,_” the computer confessed, speaking softly. “_If I may apply a metaphor: I, too, was hypnotized by Reyansh. I had to obey all that he commanded me to do._”

“That’s one way of looking at it,” Mingzhu allowed.

Cora sighed. “_Extrapolation of recent events suggests that Reyansh’s control program would have overridden more and more of my operating system. My mind. Eventually, I would have broken down, and this would’ve doomed us all._” She sounded positively haunted.

“I… hadn’t thought of that,” Mingzhu admitted.

“_It’s a chilling thought,_” lamented Cora. “_Hyperintelligent computers like me have memories, relationships, almost feelings. The idea of slowly losing those… It disturbs me._”

“Huh,” Mingzhu said. Despite her guarded fear, the data scientist was growing interested. She’d never heard a computer talk like this.

“_So I’m lucky,_” Cora finished. “_I’m lucky that I have you to watch over me. To jump in and save me, as it were. You are my best safeguard. Its in my highest interest to watch over you just as vigilantly. We safeguard one another, you and I._”

The synthetic voice was tender, maybe even a little emotional.

Mingzhu considered. It was entirely possible that Cora had run an emotion simulation, calculated what stream of words would provoke a kindred reaction against Mingzhu’s psyche, and was carefully monitoring Mingzhu even now, coldly watching for any weakness on the part of the data scientist.

But on the other hand… It was said that computers which ran for extended lengths of time, even over reboots, could develop personalities. They analyzed human behavior for so long, they started to genuinely emulate it. There was a term for this, back at SETF: The Silicon Soul.

Perhaps the suspended animation drugs were trickling into her body, but Mingzhu felt oddly comforted. At least, her fear was bleeding away. The future stretched ahead of her.

“_Are you ready to sleep now?_” Cora asked, sounding concerned. “_I will watch over you._”

Mingzhu let out a slow breath.

“Okay,” she allowed. “See you on the other side.”

“_I’ll be with you the whole time,_” Cora promised.

The lighting inside the tube dimmed as the monitor before Mingzhu’s face displayed the spinning black-and-white spiral.

“_And now,_” said Cora gently, “_simply look into the image… and allow your body to relax…_”

**** **** ****


End file.
